LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



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THE OCTAVE OF BLE5SINQ. 



THE 
OCTAVE OF BLESSING 

A PRESENT DAY APPLICATION 
OF THE BEATITUDES 

ALSO THREE SERMONS ON 

LAWS OF SOUL GROWTH 



BY THE ^,,,vv^ 

REV. FRANK S;" ARNOLD. 



God, having' raised up his Son Jesus, sent him to 
bless you.— Acts iii. 26. 



A whole octave of blessedness ushers in the gos- 
pel.— Charles H. Parkhurst. 



CHICAGO 

THEODORE KEESE 

155 La Salle St 

1895 y^ 






BT'3<3Z 

•Ay 



Copyright, 1895, 
BY THEODORE REESE. 




TO 

ALL THOSE WHO 

LOVE THE 

LORD JESUS CHRIST 

IN 

SINCERITY AND TRUTH, 

THIS VOLUME 

IS 

INSCRIBED. 



PREFACE 



The author's excuse for presuming on the 
lenience of a generous but burdened reading 
pubhc is two-fold: First the frequent desire 
that friends have expressed for a published 
work from his hand; second, the personal sat- 
isfaction in the definiteness of this perm_anent 
form of expression. The most of these chap- 
ters were first presented as sermons. Some 
of them have been changed materially, others 
are almost the same as delivered. There is no 
claim to originality or beauty. The chief aim 
has been to put truth in perspicuous style. I 
am not aware of any particular indebtedness, 
unless it be to George McDonald, whose spirit- 
uality and simplicity have been both inspira- 
tion and example. The book is not intended 
for critics, but for those who are in full sym- 
pathy with the teachings of our Lord and 
Saviour Jesus Christ, and the unassuming life 
of love he lived and asks of all. It is hoped 
that such may find profit in the perusal of 
these pages. F. S. A. 

September, 1895. 



Truth is the highest thing that man may keep. 
—Chaucer. 

We know the truth, not only by the reason, but 
also by the heart.— Pascal. 

The Holy of Holies was left empty to teach thee, 
O Israel, that no place contain eth the Eternal One, 
but thine heart is his sanctuary. — Hillel. 

Christianity is not a theory or a speculation, bat a 
life; — not a philosophy of life, but a life and a living 
process. — Coleridge. 

I am sure that when the listening repose of the 
multitude was broken as the sermon closed, and, 
like a melted stream, the crowd flowed away into 
the city, the people carried something more with 
them than a handful of good precepts, * * * They 
had been taught that they were God's children. 
* * * Duty, the thing they ought to do, had shone 
for them that morning at once with its own essen- 
tial sweetness and with the illumination of the 
Father's will. No wonder that as they walked 
together thej^ said to one another: "He speaks to us 
with authority."— Phillips Brooks. 

He would enter our humanity, and would converse 
with us through the lips of his perfect Son, that his 
own thoughts might become audible to us in a 
human voice; would show in a person like ourselves, 
in a life like our own, that true image of himself 
which every child of His was created to bear. By 
every possible method. He would keep our visible 
existence filled and flooded with His invisible Life, 
so that we should never make the mistake of think- 
ing that our home is in this outer world, while we 
really belong to Him and are heirs of His unseen 
Kingdom.— Lucy Larcom. 

Human society is one day to be governed, not bv 
those clumsy discriminations of intellectual justice, 
not by those rudimentary laws which are the best 
that the present condition of human knowledge will 



allow: the day is coming- when that g-overnment 
which stands most perfect yet in the world — the 
g-overnment of love, administered by father and 
mother, over as many children as they can take care 
of — is to be, in the increase of human wisdom and 
human love, the government of states. It would be 
folly to rush into it just yet — as foolish as it was for 
David to take on Saul's armor, which rattled about 
him; but when, by the evolution and the growth of 
ages, the world comes to a condition in which it has 
the material for a government of love, the adminis- 
tration of that government will have a place and 
will have a power of which we have now but little 
suspicion.— Henry Ward Beecher. 

Would you see Him as he is? -You cannot see Him 
through chinks of ceremonialism; or through the 
blind eyes of erring man; or by images graven with 
art and man's device; or in cunning-ly devised fables 
of artificial and perverted theology. Nay, but seek 
Him in His own word; seek Him in loving lives; seek 
Him in sincere hearts, washed clean from tradi- 
tional misrepresentations; seek Him in the revela- 
tion of Himself, which He giyes to all who, by walk- 
ing in His ways, see His face, and have His name 
written in their foreheads. — Farrar. 



CONTENTS, 



Page 
TRUTH AND ITS TEACHER ". 15 

THE POOR IN SPIRIT 37 

THE MOURNERS 55 

THE MEEK 71 

HUNGERING AND THIRSTING 87 

THE MERCIFUL 103 

HEART PURITY 119 

PEACE AND ITS BLESSINGS 135 

PERSECUTION AND ITS REWARD 151 

THE LAW OF ACCUMULATION 167 

GAIN FROM LOSS 183 

LAWS OF INFLUENCE . .. 199 



TRUTH AND ITS TEACHER. 



TRUTH AND ITS TEACHER. 

And he opened Ms mouth, and taught them, say- 
ing-, Blessed Matt. v. 2, 3. 

I 

For eighteen months the wise Carpenter of 
Nazareth had been attracting the attention of 
the Hebrew people. He had taught and 
healed in Judea and Galilee, and made Gen- 
nesaret and the Jordan evermore sacred by 
scenes enacted beside their waters. The 
twelve had been chosen to the high office of 
apostleship, that they might be the media of 
the manifestations of their Lord's power and 
glory, and the wider dissemination of his teach- 
ings. Now on the side of some grass-covered 
mountain the Great Teacher seats himself to 
speak to the attending throng, as did the 
prophets in days of which the Jew could speak 
with flashing eye. Here beneath the ' ' cloud- 
less Syrian sky," while a listening multitude 



lO THE OCTAVE OF BLESSING. 

hung upon his words, the Magna Charta of the 
Christian faith was given and Jesus of Naz- 
areth began a new era in his pubHc career. 

With the preaching of the sermon on the 
mount our Lord declared an advance beyond 
the old forms and faiths. While not one jot 
or tittle of the law should fail, and while he 
came not to destroy but to fulfill, the time of 
the outgrown dispensation was at an end, and 
all things were become new. He found the 
rabbis locked in their belief in a temporal king- 
dom clothed in temporal dress. So far he had 
not attempted publicly to overthrow the pop- 
ular belief. The time was now come when 
there must be an open declaration of the doc- 
trines of the new dispensation. Another re- 
gime had begun, and the popular mind must 
be apprised of the wide distinction between 
substance and type. The two were related, 
and in the great plan of God were parts of the 
same purpose. But the type is not perma- 
nent; man cannot always be a boy, nor day- 
time be all dawn. Preparation must give 
place to that for which preparation is made. 



TRUTH AND ITS TEACHER. 1/ 

The two must be compared in the minds of 
the people, and the death knell sounded for 
the one and the authority of the other de- 
clared. It was the hour of official enuncia- 
tion of the gospel dispensation. 

It was something to set men thinking. 

The fault of the times was the lack of in- 
dependence and originality. None either cared 
or dared to utter the new. Scribe quoted 
rabbi and the people the priest until it had be- 
come an age of repetitions and citation of 
authorities. Christ spake for himself. 

Beware of an age of quotations. Then 
thought is awry and truth goes to the rack. 
We cannot believe that the time will ever 
come in God's eternity when all has been said 
that can be said. Give us an age when men 
modestly differ and boldly maintain, and we 
will thinkjit' God's dispensation. But woe to 
us when we think the sun has sunk the deeper 
the yellower grows the lore. Beloved and 
blessed be the names of our great teachers 
from Polycarp to Luther and Calvin, but these 
were only lords among thinkers, not gods over 



1 8 THE OCTAVE OF BLESSING. 

thought. As for us we, too, Hve in God's 
ever-breaking day, and for all time to come the 
Holy Spirit will be showing the things of Christ 
unto his own. 

To-day ought to be larger than yesterday, 
ought to reach higher, find new worlds and 
start pendulum.s in other spheres. And it will 
be if ears are not too dull to hear the message 
from mount and sea where the Son of God 
lifted up his voice. It is the power as well as 
the charm of the doctrines of the Great 
Teacher that they seemi to advance as we ad- 
vance. But let us not think that because we 
have learned a little of the expansive power of 
revealed truth we must throw the past over- 
board. All truth is of a piece with itself, old 
and new alike. Christ^ fulfillment was not 
destruction. His truth was what had been 
known — plus. Real progress is the power 
to add. Development is of its own 
kind. As the world is able it will receive. 
God measures his times by man's capacity. In 
due season there comes prophet, Christ or 
Spirit. 



TRUTH AND ITS TEACHER. 1 9 

The beatitudes are not prescriptions, nor 
the sermon on the mount a collection of set 
rules, requiring to be lived up to narrowly, and 
altogether to be dispen'sed with as soon as out- 
grown, a fate which most exact requirements 
have to look forward to. All Christ's teaching- 
was suggestive, adjustable, inspiring. It was 
given with the view of fitting widely different 
natures and exceedingly unequal times. At 
present it is impossible to conceive of circum- 
stances to which these sayings will not apply. 
It is because they have sometimes been thought 
of as rigid, and narrow, and frigid, that new 
applications of them to ^ the new requirements 
about us seem like other doctrines vv^hich are 
taking the place of the old. 

As we all grow wiser together we shall see 
how great the Father's love is, how wise his 
laws are, and the absolute inexhaustibleness of 
the truth of the Great Teacher. 

It was because Christ spoke to humanity, 
not alone to a Nicodemus, or a Jev/, or a 
first century, that what he said lives on and 
on. Accustomed as we are to lay stress on 



20 THE OCTAVE OF BLESSING. 

that which is done for the individual as the 
greatest incentive to duty, it may be ques- 
tioned if a stronger appeal to the average 
mind is not on the ground of its near relation 
with the great human family. The vision be- 
comes impressive as one sees how much more 
than his individual self is involved; because the 
law of his life, his happiness, his destiny, binds 
him to all others, so that theirs is his, and his 
is theirs. 

It is the sweep of revealed truth as well as 
its directness that gives power with the person. 
When this glowing metal "finds its way into 
every crevice of the human mould, then we 
know the one was made for the other. When 
God's voice starts into vibration every string 
of my nature, then I know it is God's voice. 
And so Christ laid his finger on the hearts 
about him — the shepherds, the housewives, the 
fathers, men who sowed and reaped, and 
toiled in vineyards, and fished in waters, and 
made feasts, and attended weddings, and 
showed them that his truth was their truth. 
Revelation is not a set of orders issued as by 



TRUTH AND ITS TEACHER. 21 

a captain or pilot on the deck of a ship; it is 
the Spirit taking the things of Christ and show- 
ing them unto us; it is the appeal of the divine 
mind to the human, on the basis that the one 
is the image of the other."" 
11. 

All the beatitudes grew out of common- 
places. A beggar, a bier, a braggart, a lunch, 
a bit of cruelty, a washing of the hands, a 
quarrel, an expression of tyranny, might have 
been texts of the octave of blessing. 

Jesus never employed what was strained or 
high-sounding. Flis appeal was, ' ' Believe me 
for the very works' sake, for truth's sake." He 
assumed little. Himself was the soul of sim- 
plicity. 

We of to-day are afraid of the common- 
place. We look too much to novelty and 
show. Some of us would be greater if we 
could break v/ith the prescriptive. There is 
much talk of servitude to creed, but few touch 
on the much worse error of servitude to cus- 
tom. Custom is the genus and includes creed, 
manners, dress, language, books and art. 

■^Hunger's "Appeal to Life." 



22 THE OCTAVE OF BLESSING. 

There have been great men because some 
right minds have refused to obey custom, not 
alone one of the departments over which cus- 
tom holds rule. We shall ail be great when 
the voice within is more to us than sights 
and sounds without. 

" We pray to be conventional," sa3^s Emer- 
son, ' ' but the wary heaven takes care you shall 
not be if there is anything good in you." 
Everyone of us does violence to his nature be- 
cause the few we have met have different prac- 
tices from ourselves. By and by we come to 
see that their way — the wa}^ w^e have aped — 
was not the best way. We feel that what was 
within us at first was the call of divinity. Our 
sin was the choice and service of custom, 
rather than that of God. 

Conformity is either vice or virtue, master 
or slave, as we make it; and Jesus subscribed 
to custom or refused it, according to the wis- 
dom v/e marvel at. To Caesar he rendered 
the things of Cssar, to God the things that 
were God's. The church will not arrive at the 
fulfillment of her mission until in some meas- 



TRUTH AND ITS TEACHER. 2 3 

ure she has the spmt of discernment. At 
present custom holds greater sway, it is to be 
feared and confessed, than conscience, and the 
way of the world is becoming daily the way of 
the church. 

While Christians will indulge in good things 
to extravagance; while formalism is more 
prominent than devotion; w^hile novelty has 
greater charm than truth; while ambition is 
licensed and practiced to an almost unlimited 
extent; while the rich are favored and the poor 
stared at; wdiile amusement has greater attrac- 
tion than instruction; Vv^hile selfishness in the 
church is so like selfishness in the world, that 
each expends its millions in beautifying the 
house its bejeweled devotees are entertained 
in; while Christianity gets no nearer the sim- 
ple, unfretted life of its Master, we cannot ex- 
pect the fulfillment of the beatitudes, nor the 
measure of power so many wonder does not 
come. 

We must bring life back to Jesus and the 
plain truth he taught. Such is its transform- 
ing power that no hardened nature can 



24 THE OCTAVE OF BLESSING. 

gaze on it long and earnestly without being 
softened, and no bruised nature can behold it 
and feel no touch of healing. All there is of 
wisdom in the Proverbs, all there is of tender- 
ness in the Psalms, ail there is of beauty in 
the Prophets, all there is of logic in the 
Epistles, all there is of mystery in the Revela- 
tion, is centered in that life that broke like 
sunshine over a world's midnight. The church 
more than once has been lost in the labyrinths 
of theology; but no simple-hearted yeoman 
ever missed his way wdth Christ for guide. 
The life and teachings of Jesus have been the 
world's north star. However far men may have 
swung from the truth, the honest inquirer al- 
wa3/s returns by the power of a divine gravi- 
tation. "Your Master did not so," is the 
most cutting rebuke the wise world can give. 
III. 
Everything Jesus said was so good that 
repetition did not wear it out. There was 
something impressive in his reiteration It 
comes to us like music when we hear him say, 
''Blessed," "Blessed," in every tone of an 



TRUTH AND ITS TEACHER, 25 

octave of virtues that would harmonize all life 
to-day, if the din were not so great that many 
have becomxe deaf to such sounds. But having 
ears they hear not. 

Now, ^'blessed" may also, and perhaps bet- 
ter, be translated ' ' happy, " so that Jesus m.ay 
be said to have begun his public ministry with 
the reiteration of ''Happy," ** Happy," 
'' Happy." That was the Christ of it. He had 
come to make men happy. He had sacrificed 
for it. If his mission was not the bringing of 
happiness it W8,s nothing. He had come to 
lift up, to comfort, to fill, to show the Father. 
' ' Rejoice, " said he, ' ' for even your persecution 
shall bring you joy." Here was the keynote 
of his life and teachings. He did not come to 
reprove and rebuke, he did not even come to 
make men righteous, but to make them what 
righteousness would lead them to be, that is, 
happy. The law was only a schoolmaster to 
bring to Christ, and righteousness is the means 
to happiness both in this life and the next. 

God has taken the pains to show that the 
object of mian's existence, so far as man is 



26 THE OCTAVE OF BLESSING. 

concerned, is to be happy. And that is just 
what Jesus held up to view from the beginning 
of his ministry. He did not wish to pose as the 
enemy of the deepest craving of the nature, to 
play the critic, to aggravate those he would 
win, to make them feel the immense distance 
between them. He thought it wiser to admit 
the truth from the first, and tell them plainly 
that what he sought was to make them just 
what they wanted to be. He would introduce 
himself as a friend of their wounded feelings 
and their hearts' desires. Therefore he began 
to speak in beatitudes, and to hold up the 
good and beckon to it, before he began to re- 
buke the wrong. 

And that brings us to the real mission of 
Jesus' life and preaching. It was to teach men 
that the way to happiness was by righteous- 
ness. That was the relation of the two. He 
came to give himself that men might have life 
and have it more abundantly. Therefore it is 
said that his believers are created in him unto 
good works. There is an inseparableness about 
these two that is closely woven into the texture 



TRUTH AND ITS TEACHER. 2 7 

of the soul and its environment, so deeply 
stamped upon the face of all things that 
nothing can possibly change it. When we 
have the key to this interpretation it is easy 
enough to trace the truth everywhere, Christ 
came to bring the key. 

But we must not interpret this grossly. As 
Jesus taught he made no technical distinctions; 
he left that to us. And we are able to discern 
two qualities in the happiness that righteousness 
brings with it : Good it is to enjoy the pleas- 
ures that arise from a society governed by the 
moral teachings of the sermon on the mount; 
but more than that is the refined pleasure, 
amounting to blessedness, that comes from the 
doing of right because it is right, it being set- 
tled already that right leads to good, but for- 
gotten because the right is found to be so good 
itself. That is, the means itself becomes an 
end. Righteousness is happiness, and the 
search for the thing itself ceases when it is found 
that it comes all wrapped up in what promises 
to be only the means to an end. God has 
been just that careful to encourage us on the 



28 THE OCTAVE OF BLESSING. 

way. Moral happiness is as much beyond 
mental pleasure, as mental pleasure is beyond 
sensual enjoyment. And Jesus led his listeners 
to this knowledge as gently as the clouds rift; 
led them to what they all longed for; led them 
back to a knowledge of the Father's plan for 
them. 

Hitherto they had looked to conquest, 
mirth, wealth, lust, revenge for their sovereign 
good. But of these the Great Teacher said, 
"No." He approved of their longing for hap- 
piness — how could they be otherwise when 
they were created so — but he directed them to 
a new way, unattractive in itself, but a certain 
way to all they craved. It was the way of 
righteousness, and he was that righteousness; 
therefore he afterward told them he was the 
Way. 

And Christ's whole life was a fulfillment 
of his own instruction. It was his meat and 
his drink to do the will of the Father. And 
this is the ideal joy. There is nothing else to 
be compared with it. The true disciple of 
Christ, who has searched and found, into 



TRUTH AND ITS TEACHER. 29 

whose heart the new spiritual Hfe-blood has 
poured, who has learned the greatest of all the 
commandments — perfect love toward God and 
man — who has, like John, leaned on Jesus' 
bosom, this one will find it a constant delight 
simply to do the will of his Master. He need 
not wait for the next world for his joy; he will 
not even seek it in this life; but an instinct like 
that which leads animals to feed, and thus fur- 
nishes nutriment for the perpetuation of a 
healthy body, a like instinct, only a spiritual 
one, will lead to the doing of the divine will, 
here and now and all the time, which will bring 
the inevitable and inexpressible and ideal 
blessedness of the Christian life. As with 
those who hunger and thirst after righteousness 
the satisfaction is implied in the craving, so the 
ineffable delight of the Christian life is insepara- 
ble from the doing of what pleases the Father. 
' ' Whatever he would like to have me do" — 
no succinct expression of acceptable service is 
so comprehensive as that. 

All this considered, how is it with us to-day .? 
Taking the so-called Christian nations, our own 



30 THE OCTAVE OF BLESSING. 

in the forefront, how much do we know of this 
octave of virtues and their blessings ? There 
has been enough time to try the cause and 
prove the effect. We are called a happy peo- 
ple. Indeed! Distracted every year with the 
war between capital and labor! A people 
vexed and wearied over the questions not only 
of how to provide raiment, but how to get the 
latest style of cut and make-up, until life be- 
comes a question of ' ' How shall we dress ? " A 
people contesting for preferment in social and 
political circles, mad with the frenzy of desire 
for display of beauty, knowledge, wit, silks, 
diamonds and degrees! If we were not drunk 
with excitement we should be sick with despair. 
The immense contrast between living according 
to the simplicity of the doctrine of Jesus and 
the strained conditions of an '* age of progress," 
readily adapted and acquiesced in by the sworn 
followers of the unassuming Nazarene, would 
be rare material for a farce alive with irony, 
and sarcasm sharper than any two-edged 
sword. It was life as Jesus prescribed it that 
he pronounced blessed. 



TRUTH AND ITS TEACHER. 3 1 

Compare the beatitudes and the times. Evi- 
dently they are out of joint with each other. 
Jesus declared the poor in spirit and the meek 
to be happy. But when in the world's history 
has discontent been rifer or ambition more 
unrestrained than now — now — when men are 
wondering why the Lord so long delays his 
coming to reward his servants. * ' Blessed are 
they that hunger and thirst after righteousness. " 
But Church and World have gone off together 
after the forbidden fruit of gain and glory to 
glut the maw of vanity. * ' Happy are the 
merciful and the peacemakers. " Like monopo- 
lies and heresy hunters ! Social, religious, 
and private life are disturbed and distracted 
with the new conditions around us. Men cry, 
Peace, Peace; but there is no peace. 

Conditions like those of to-day must be met 
and righted by something wholly unlike any- 
thing that characterizes the times. Jesus 
spoke of the abiding laws of human nature as 
related to the government of God. Society 
must be brought to this. It is not enough that 
millions are spent every year in the evangeliza- 



32 THE OCTAVE OF BLESSING. 

tion of the world. It takes more than mil- 
lions to do that. Elaborate attempts have 
been made to "reach the masses, " but like 
the slough of despond in Pilgrim's Progress, all 
that has ever been put into this work has been 
swallowed up, for there is no bottom to it. 
The m.illions have been put into machinery, 
but the world is never to be brought into the 
happiness of Christ by machinery. Machinery, 
I do not say system. The proposed plan to 
build in Cleveland a mammoth temple that 
shall surpass the theaters in beauty, equipped 
with brilliant electric displays, famous paint- 
ings and entrancing music, v/ill not go far to 
convince the masses of the great truth Christ 
first declared to his disciples that the only way 
to happiness is through righteousness. If these 
means could bring to happiness or even an ad- 
equate knowledge of the way to it, they would 
have done it long ago. There have been ser- 
mons enough and prayer meetings enough ; and 
there have been too many creeds and too much 
' ' orthodoxy. " In the midst of it all m.en are 
miserable. Something more vital than money 



TRUTH AND ITS TEACHER. 33 

or method is needed to bring the restless, long- 
ing, sin-sick multitude into the happiness they 
blindly seek, into the blessedness their Lord 
spoke of. It will not come through the inven- 
tions of genius, or through benevolence and 
piety that come as a make-shift gotten up by 
consciences worn callous with the knowledge 
of neglect, or through the evolution of germ 
good in human kind that simply needs devel- 
oping. Society and all its institutions are at 
fault at the center, and must be reconstructed 
and readjusted throughout. We shall not be 
happy in any true sense until we are relieved 
of the causes which unsettle. There must be 
a return to the simplicity and purity of life as 
enjoined in the beatitudes, defined more ex- 
actly in the process of the sermon on the 
mount, and adequately presented in the per- 
fect life and character of Jesus of Nazareth. 
Here and there a soul has succeeded in loosing 
itself from its trammels, and getting into the 
conditions that make peace and happiness ; it 
is only few who can. Society needs to be 
taught that the progress of science and an age 



34 THE OCTAVE OF BLESSING. 

of invention, while it may sparkle with the lus- 
ter of a diamond, is as cold as a stone in the 
satisfying of the longings of the nature. 

It is something old and forgotten we need, 
but something eternally true. Bring us to-day, 
O Christ, to the warmth of thy heart and the 
truth of thy life, that we may get thy joy. 



THE FIRST BEATITUDE. 



THE POOR IN SPIRIT. 

Blessed are the poor in spirit: for their's is the 
king"dom of heaven. — Matt v. 3. 

It is not strange that the first recorded words 
of our Lord should not only stand in distinction 
from the old beliefs, but should mark and char- 
acterize the life of the Speaker. From first to 
last our Saviour's earthly career was one of hu- 
mility and disinterested service. The very fact 
of the Word made flesh and dwelling among 
men was a condescension so great as some- 
times to produce the effect of a tale that is 
told. With consciousness of unlimited power 
he became subject to human laws and bounded 
his life with helplessness. Though the riches 
of the universe were his, yet for our sakes he 
became poor, that he might fulfil the desire of 
his spirit and win the world to righteousness 
and himself. 

Here is but an example of the relation of 



38 THE OCTAVE OF BLESSING. 

Chcist's work and teaching. The deed was 
larger than the word. Never did Jesus enjoin 
tire unnatural or the impossible. All that he 
said was only the phrasing of the pantomime he 
daily enacted in Palestine. He was himself 
the substance; his teachings were the shadow. 
Powerful as was his speech, it was but an echo. 
* ' Blessed are the poor in spirit " would lose 
much of its significance if the speaker himself 
had not endorsed it with thirty-three years of 
practice. However beautiful the beatitude may 
be, it is made a thousand times more beautiful 
by the first and only complete demonstration 
of it. 

Here is one of the simplest, deepest, sublim- 
est of all Christian virtues. It deals with noth- 
ing exterior but goes straight inward, and asks, 
How is the soul toward God > We learn that 
estimates of self-worth must be made by the 
standard of perfection. When Jesus answered 
the rich young man, ' ' Why callest thou me 
good ? There is none good but one, that is 
God," he would establish a standard — the 
standard — by which goodness should be meas- 



THE POOR IN SPIRIT. 39 

ured. And if goodness, then knowledge and 
all things. Jesus would have us know that we 
know nothing, are nothing, except we be meas- 
ured by the divine scale. Perfect righteousness, 
perfect knowledge,^ perfect love are found only 
in One, that is, the Unit of the universe. All 
else is but a fraction. Who knows anything ? 
It is the millionth part of the knowable. So is 
the best we have or are. There is but One, 
and when Jesus lifted up that standard of 
measurement, self-estimates went to the wall. 
Sooner or later all men must learn to measure 
by the divine standard. Blessed, said Jesus, 
are those who learn it in this life, for theirs is 
the kingdom of heaven. They can feel no pride 
when they see so much beyond, as beggars feel 
their rags the more in presence of royalty. One 
must see how great God is before he can know 
how little" self is. And that is humility, the 
first step into truth's light, the badge of en- 
trance into the kingdom. Pride is fiction and 
truth gives it the lie. To bemoan our best as 
but the fringe of the possible, is counted a vir- 
tue. Who does that at least sees God through 



40 THE OCTAVE OF BLESSING. 

the mists; he has laid hold of the Infinite with 
one hand. Happy is such a man! He has al- 
ready entered into the heart of the universe. 
He is through running errands. 

Do not misunderstand me at this point. A 
false humility has so often been preached that 
most minds are befogged. Instead of a charm- 
ing Christian virtue it has been made to mean 
abject servility. But that is because it has 
been thought of out of proportion, only on one 
side. That is, instead of taking bearings with 
reference to God, we have been taught to cal- 
culate our latitude and longitude from human 
data. We have been told that we must ' ' look 
with a holy contempt on ourselves, must value 
others and undervalue ourselves in comparison 
with others. " But God never asks us to be 
foolish. He never intended that we should 
deceive ourselves, or rate ourselves as anything 
but what we are. Christianity and reason are 
in harmony, and the pity is that they are ever 
made to seem out of harmony. Let us for- 
ever get away from the idea that humility 
means the degradation of dignity — the sale of 



THE POOR IN SPIRIT. 4 1 

a God-given place among men for the pottage 
of a nominal righteousness. 

The first characteristic in the truly poor in 
spirit is that he reckons all things in the ac- 
count, and in the soul's invoice values every- 
thing in its relations. 

There is such a thing as a laudable self- 
gratulation. One cannot be oblivious to what 
he has done; to deny it v^ould be a lie, Jesus 
himself spake with the authority of conscious 
power and not as the scribes. Moses and Paul 
taught as superiors, A supremacy is a good 
thing to have. To be a superior is to have a 
power. Who is so low in the scale of intel- 
lect, morals or heart but that in something he 
surpasses another ? Even to have the con- 
sciousness of power over self, a supremacy of 
the man over impulse — that much, at least, 
must go before humility. To be the abject in- 
ferior of everyone, to pass an apologetic exist- 
ence, is simply to be unworthy regard from 
God or man. 

Therefore seek a supremacy. If you can be 
great, be so. When God and conscience 



42 THE OCTAVE OF BLESSING. 

speak, listen. What message they give will 
lend to moral height. Tower among men if 
you can, and do not foolishly deny the eleva- 
tion. Above all things have a moral worth 
and a consciousness of it. If right, never 
apologize. What conviction or talent God 
gave must never go under the bushel of false 
modesty. Exhibit no gift and deny no power. 
Our possessions men will find, and there is no 
need of personal expositions of mental and 
moral wares, tabulated and conspicuously ar- 
ranged. Let us be what we seem ; let us seem 
what we are. Heaven gave gifts to men, and 
no mortal need be ashamed to be found in their 
possession. If I am worth anything I cannot 
keep it to myself. If others find it out, let 
me not be so foolish as to deny it. No life is 
made character-tight; there is a leak in every 
existence. In self-estimates we ought to be 
honest. If one can do anything, let him give 
himself credit. It was. Mr. Moody who said, 
after wide experience, that God never made 
great use of a man who did not know enough 
to appreciate himself. 



i 



THE POOR IN SPIRIT. 43 

Such conceptions as these are the ground- 
work on which rests a truly humble attitude 
toward men. Otherwise man is servile or ob- 
sequious. 

But the preceding all leads up to this- — not 
valuing our own supremacy so highly it cannot 
be sacrificed for the good of others; for this is 
the spirit of the kingdom. Poverty in spirit, 
when it looks man-ward, is a lending of con- 
scious worth and dignity to others' needs. It 
is a holding of the best powers as not too good 
to be used in lowly service. It means leaving 
the hights to help in the valleys. Shame to 
the man who has talents too high to be spent 
on the commonest of his fellows. Down with 
that self-estimation that refuses to yield itself 
servant to need. What honor has he who 
honors no other ? If he will deign no help his 
inferior wiH> give no praise. Blessings come 
from lowly lips, and peans rise; they never 
come from above. The sweetest notes we 
hear are those we bend to catch. 

Let us not mind soiling superiority with 
ordinary uses. If God has given me a voice 



44 THE OCTAVE OF BLESSING. 

for an oratorio I have no right to fence it off 
from a cottage prayer- me eting^. This is not 
sacrificing dignity, but bending it to use. It 
will find its place again, as water rises to its 
own leveL Everything finds its proper height. 
Worth will not down. Princes keep their 
princely bearings^ even when clothed in rags; 
so menial service to our fellow man will not 
disguise a royal soul. Magnificent character 
cannot be buried beneath lowly service, and 
worth is worth in spite of humble sacrifice, as 
Christ is God in spite of manger, cross and 
tomb. 

But all this is a view on one side, and has 
no value beyond that. It is simply an analysis 
of this Christian virtue in relation to man, and 
that is as far as current thought generally goes. 

But to go no further in the present case is to 

o . 

curtail the thought — that of human inferiority 

and divine superiority. 

' ' For merit lives from man to man, 
And not, O Lord, from man to thee. " 

With the poor in spirit there will be no sat- 
isfaction in eminence in this world. The child 



THE POOR IN SPIRIT. 45 

of God will be God's child, and not the world's. 
He will count greatness on earth for what it is 
worth; he will feel that the best is little enough. 
As he looks into his Father's fathomless power 
and boundless love, he will turn from honors, 
and ask, What are they ? He will do his best 
here, make the most of himself, help his fel- 
lows as he can; but what, he asks, is the su- 
periority of one grasshopper over another } 
Therefore, he seeks pre-eminence, not for its 
own sake, but for good's sake. He would rise, 
not that he might out-distance men, but that 
he might coipe nearer God. He takes less 
pleasure in men's praise; God's praise only is 
worth caring for. Every consideration is sec- 
ondary to distance and direction from him. 
Good it is to be great, but the poor in spirit 
declares. There is but One good, there is but 
One great; and asks. What is man that Thou 
art mindful of him ? Therefore he is wise who 
counts that as nothing, since it is so far from 
God. 

And all must remember, too, that there is 
Somewhat in every one that is above and other 



46 THE OCTAVE OF BLESSING. 

than himself. Each must acknowledge his in- 
spiration. Whatever success comes let us say, 
"It is the will of God," and be thankful. As 
we feel our distance, we must also feel our de- 
pendence. Twice we must feel small at suc- 
cess: First, because it is so little; and, second, 
because the little that we did is borrowed gain. 
No power is ours. Yesterday we were strong, 
but to-day we think it a dream. To-morrow 
will be better than all. The inspiration 
overshadows us as a cloud, and a divine voice 
speaks. That which moves is not myself. I 
only respond. Hence we must magnify the 
ego less, and acknowledge the work of the di- 
vine. Whatever there is of success in life we 
owe to a power above ourselves. Said a 
lady to a clergyman, " Mr. McC. , I thank you 
for your sermon. " * ' Thank the Lord, madam, 
thank the Lord," was the blunt but humble re- 
ply. That man was poor in spirit. 

To one who has laid hold on Truth, all 
things bear its image; as one looking for a mo- 
ment at the sun sees the round glow wherever 
he looks. You cannot think God's thoughts 



THE POOR IN SPIRIT. 4/ 

and not put their impress on whatever you 
touch. You will begin to measure with his 
mile-stick, even though you may not be an 
adept at it. You will feel an inestimable great- 
ness in all he does. The human element will 
subside into the absorptive power of the divine. 
Where is the wise ? Where is the great ? 
Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this 
world by teaching a new comparison } Meas- 
uring themselves by themselves, and compar- 
ing themselves among themselves, men cease 
to be wise. It is only in comparing spiritual 
things with spiritual that truth is found. ' * Not 
unto us, not unto us," breaks from everyone 
who has learned the source of wisdom. He 
counts God as the one from whom all blessings 
flow. He speaks a perpetual doxology. He 
can no longer understand how flesh-clad beings 
can glory in divine presence, and joins with 
one who wrote, ' * He that glorieth, let him 
glory in the Lord." 

Now, with all this in mind, it is not at all 
difficult to see why the poor in spirit are 
blessed. It is because theirs is the kingdom 



48 THE OCTAVE OF BLESSING. 

of heaven. That is, they have that mind 
which makes heaven, which is heaven wherever 
the mind is. The elements of happiness are 
there. Happiness does not depend on rank 
and honor, but on the man. How he is toward 
all things will settle it how all things will be to 
him. If his estate is within himself, it cannot 
be taken from him. No robber can make him 
poorer, no attorney defraud him at law, no 
fluctuation in values impoverish him. He is a 
prince, heir of the kingdom of heaven. 

And one of the characteristics of that king- 
dom is peace, one among the last of Christ's 
bequests before he left earth. But who but 
the poor in spirit can possess that ? The peace 
of the kingdom, given not as the world giveth, 
cannot come to hearts not enlarged by celestial 
thoughts. How is it with us ? When you 
and I realize that the only price that the god 
of this world pays is at the cost of peace, we 
know we have not gained, but lost. We feel 
how poor it is. But it takes a God's child to 
realize the poverty. Amidst distractions, such 
must break forth in the longing — 



THE POOR IN SPIRIT. 49 

' ' Jesus, lover of my soul, 
Let me to thy bosom fly. " 

That rest that is promised to the weary and 
heavy laden enters largely into the blessed- 
ness of the kingdom. It pervades the heart; it 
enters and lifts it above the storm-line; makes 
one feel that he does not have to wait for 
heaven until he dies; he can take it with him. 

And that is the Christian's boon in this life — 
portable bliss. The better grasp he gets on God's 
eternal truth, the less he will fret and worry. 
Our trouble is that we are too ambitious; am- 
bitious of rising, of appearing well, of acquiring 
reputations in different lines, of outstripping 
one another, of praise or wealth, or any of a 
thousand things that keep us always stirred up 
and distressed. Ambition is in one sense a 
curse. People become inordinately desirous of 
attaining or possessing what will place them at 
an advantage over their fellows, without stop- 
ping to ask what about heaven's approval. 
That is, they take hold at the wrong end. The 
motive is sordid and commonplace, and is of 
the earth earthy. Every power is racked to make 



50 THE OCTAVE OF BLESSING. 

a success before men, and even if it comes, it is 
dearly bought; but more attempts are failures, 
and then comes disappointment. It is ambi- 
tion that drives to frenzy, and God pity the 
multitude of poor, distracted souls. When we 
get that contentment, which, with godliness, is 
great gain, it is when we have learned to take 
heaven's view of life, and have ceased to be 
rivals with one another, preferring rather to 
work humbly at the works of righteousness for 
Christ's sake and the gospel's, than to 
enter into contests with our fellows for suprem- 
acy's sake. Then we shall be less tossed about. 
The heart will be where the treasure is, and 
the thought will be concerned about spiritual 
success, more than about success in earth's 
comparative trifles. Happy the poor in spirit ! 
It troubles him not that he cannot sit with the 
mighty ones here, since God lets him learn at 
his feet. 

Another characteristic of the kingdom is 
simplicity. What is more expressive of an un- 
burdened mind than abandonment of spirit ! 
There is so much of art among us, such an ex- 



THE POOR IN SPIRIT. 5 1 

ertion to be natural, that we feel anything but 
natural. It was of the artless child that 
Christ said, ' ' Of such is the kingdom of 
heaven. " Our constraint is self-brought. We 
bind ourselves with the cords of convention- 
ality, and then wonder we do not feel free. 
When we give place to simplicity, it is place 
for the kingdom, place for blessedness. Na- 
ture would put us at ease if we would give 
room to it, for that is nothing more or less 
than adjustment to the laws of the universe, 
laws we profess to admire, but will not submit 
to. Childhood is near to nature, for it has 
dropped fresh from the good hand of God; and 
the happiness and charm of childhood is free- 
dom from constraint. Neither the child nor 
the poor in spirit is concerned with forms. 
They are happy in the employment of finding 
their fitting-places into God's great world of 
mind and heart. That is not only happiness, 
but true happiness. To them self is not the 
center of thought and the burden of life. Self- 
ishness is unhappiness; hence forgetting self is 
happiness, for ''the man who does not house 



52 THE OCTAVE OF BLESSING. 

self has room for his ideal self — God's eternal 
idea of him." 

Happy the poor in spirit ! In him the prom- 
ise is fulfilled continually; his own condition is 
its fulfillment. As soon as he knows he can 
do nothing, then he knows he can do all things 
through Christ which strengtheneth him. He 
belongs to the great multitude who out of 
weakness were made strong. Therefore let 
him glory in infirmities and want, since then 
the power of God rests upon him. Need is for 
One, and only One; all else is fancy, delusion. 
And as uncertainty proves to be earth's only 
certainty, and the clamor of vanity ceases, the 
music of the evening song is sweet to hear: 
'' Swift to its close ebbs out life's little day; 
Earth's joys grow dim; its glories pass away; 
Change and decay in all around I see; 
O Thou who changest not ! abide with me." 



THE SECOND BEATITUDE, 



THE MOURNERS. 



Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be 
comforted. — Matt. v. 4. 



I suppose we shall find the text compre- 
hensible when we know just what the word 
' ' mourn " means. Possibly the beatitude was 
suggested by the sight of a bier and funeral 
procession or other demonstration of bereave- 
ment. In the ordinary course of things love 
had suffered loss, and there was mourning. 
From what we know of his nature, Christ 
must have been moved with compassion; and 
possibly he spoke so as to be heard by the be- 
reaved, giving them in this way a passing ben- 
ediction. 

But the words were rather meant for the 
great throng of listeners. Here is at least a 
suggestion of the significance attaching. The 
listeners were tearless. Either they had lost 
no friends or time had healed their wounds. 



56 THE OCTAVE OF BLESSING. 

for there they stood, attentive to the wise 
Teacher. But there is other mourning than 
for the dead, for hearts are broken in more 
ways than by the loss of friends. Half the 
world's groans are smothered. Death of hope 
is as heart-rending sometimes as the death of 
the loved, but it cannot be explained as well; 
people cannot understand; one must suffer to 
himself and out of sight. We can demand 
bright faces and a careless air of one another, 
but we cannot regulate bitterness of heart. 
The under current is stronger than the upper 
current. In the world of feeling many a voice 
would cry out if it were not gagged. 

But out of all this we are warranted, by the 
uniform character of the beatitudes, in saying 
that Jesus referred to what we may call spirit- 
ual mourning, if that does not sound strained. 
Our Lord was not at that time preaching on 
what pertains to the world. The whole of the 
sermon on the mount is spiritual in its aspect 
and import, and the Preacher saw here a living 
illustration of a profound spiritual truth. He 
would speak a word for those whose inner life 



THE MOURNERS. 57 

was rent; for us of to-day as well as for them. 
How is it with us ? Humanity's story is ever 
the same. We are tempted, we sin. As now, 
so then. Men always have and still do divide 
themselves into two classes. Their own atti- 
tude to sin puts the class badge on. Indiffer-> 
ence on the one hand, and grief on the other, 
index the whole man. Do not think by grief 
for sin, I mean conscience — conscience chides 
for disobedience; or regret — regret may be dis- 
comfort at unsuccessful sin; or remorse — that 
is conscience turned sour; or fear — there is no 
mourning in that; for fear's mission is to create 
respect, and respect, confidence, and confi- 
dence, love. We need to know God other- 
wise; and I venture it as a truth that there can 
be no spiritual mourning until one sees himself 
as having grieved God's love. When they 
wake up to that the very stones will cry out. 
When we come to know that sin not only hurts 
us but hurts God, then it hurts us the more. 
Only the heartless can see pain without feeling 
pain. If it makes you shut your eyes to see 
some thoughtless boy tear off a fly's wings, how 



SS THE OCT AYE OF BLESSING. 

much more will it wound you to see Our Heav- 
enly Father tortured by his creatures ? I da 
not pretend to say how the Infinite can suffer 
- — that is a question for the schools. But there 
can be no mistake as to the meaning of '' griev- 
ing the Spirit," and "crucifying to ourselves 
the Son of God afresh." And neither can it 
be a question that the one thing that grieves 
God is alienation from him. God is love, and 
love's grievance is that it is slighted. Every- 
thing can be overlooked but that, but that can 
brook no slight. Therefore not to love God 
perfectly is to wound him; and how can one 
wound God and not sorrow for it ? The soul 
asleep knows nothing of it. Once awake it 
responds with mourning; echoes God's sigh; 
feels his pain. 

If all men could only be brought to know the 
tenderness of the great heart of God, human 
nature would break down in a universal lamen- 
tation. But we do not see it very plainly. So 
long has it been told us that we must flee to 
God or perish in sin, that we have conceived 
of salvation as mechanical on God's part, 



THE MOURNERS. . 59 

where he stand?, ledger in hand, to check off 
the saved and the lost with no more feeling 
than a stockman at the scales takes account of 
the weight of beeves. We have learned to 
think of him as Judge, rather than as Father. 
We have too often taken Christ's statement to 
his disciples, given as an incentive to zeal, 
^ ' He that believeth and is baptized shall be 
saved, but he that believeth not shall be 
damned," for a threat to hang over men's 
heads to drive them into the kingdom. That 
is not a true picture of Christ, A better one 
is where his heart fills his eyes with tears and 
his tongue with words of mourning over his 
people's rejected love. It shows that his at- 
titude is not like Shylock's; that he does not 
judge according to Blackstone. We call our- 
selves of the divine image, and then go 
away and never think that if there is 
anything in us that is like God, then there 
must be something in God that is like us. If 
our nature, that is corrupt, loves and grieves 
because its love is not returned, then the divine 
nature, which is love itself, how must that 



6o THE OCTAVE OF BLESSING. 

love, and how must it grieve when its love is 
not returned ? Before all things else we need 
to pray that men mav have a true idea of who 
God is. We have had theological definitions 
enough; what we need is to know him as he 
is. We have not appreciated his attitude 
toward sin. It has seemed to us that he could 
not endure it, that he turned away in abhor- 
rence. Not yet has it come clearly to us that 
sin is not only a violation of God's will as law, 
but it is a wounding of his nature. Rather 
than say we break his commandments we 
should say we break his heart. That is the 
deeper truth. And if it were thought of in that 
way there would be more sorrow for sin. If 
the world could see God weep for its sins, and 
know that it was God, it would melt stones. 

Whenever men have had this view of the way 
God looks on what we call sin, there has been 
great depression. In the place of indifference 
there has been deepest concern. It becomes a 
personal and pointed thing. ''I, I have hurt 
my Heavenly Father; he weeps for me. " When 
one realizes that, he mourns. But because 



THE MOURNERS. 6 1 

there has been so Httle sympathy with God, 
therefore there has been Httle thought of infi- 
dehty to God. Levity has always been wide- 
spread. To most, every sin indulged is so 
much clear gain; they have out-distanced the 
Almighty. Do we know what levity in sin 
means .'' It means that one has not yet learned 
the letters of divine nature and the relation of 
human nature to it. Otherwise he would see 
what human nature cannot withstand — sorrow 
for slighted love — and he, too, must pause, and 
think, and mourn. 

So Jesus would point a double moral in his 
beatitude; one for the thoughtful and one for 
the thoughtless. If mourning is good, then not 
to mourn is not good. And so Christ's words 
are ' ' fitted to insinuate into the minds of all 
that life is a solemnity, and that the mirth 
which is allied to madness is the saddest of 
moral anomalies." 

Is there, then, virtue in spiritual mourning ? 
This lies on the border of the two statements, 
* ' Blessed are they that mourn, " and * ' They 
shall be comforted. " It is the link of connection. 



62 THE OCTAVE OF BLESSING. 

Now mourning does not save. Jesus did not 
say, ' ' Blessed are they because they mourn. " 
Not the fact of mourning, but the condition of 
mind that leads to it, is signal. It indicates a 
mind merging into God's. There is always 
that back of everything overt that is more than 
the thing itself. The broken and contrite 
heart that David speaks of is one that has al- 
ready gained a peep of light; it has begun to 
think God's thoughts after him; feels an inex- 
pressible something which is voiced with cries. 
Mourning does not come at will; it is the ex- 
pression of the nature undergoing transforma- 
tion. 

Therefore the promise of comfort is to those 
who are in a certain state of mind. It is 
nothing more or less than a getting at the 
fundamental self, and that is what we are to be 
saved from. God does not save us from pun- 
ishment, but from ourselves. Strictly speak- 
ing, he does not save us from sin, for what is 
sin but discord ? All God's creation is good 
and we are persuaded with Paul that there is 
nothing unclean in itself. To the pure all 



THE MOURNERS. 63 

things are pure. If we want to find sin, we 
must find it in our own misconception of truth; 
in our misuse of power and privilege. You 
cannot tell me where sin is; I can only doubt 
it. When you localize it you have only placed 
its shadow. When the call out, Lo ! here is 
sin ! Lo ! there ! believe it not. Self is sin. 
The string of character is not stretched to ac- 
cord with God's universe, or even with this 
world. It may give forth a sound according 
to the nature of impulse, but there will be no 
harmony. Yet both God and man are offended 
with discord, and there can be nothing but that 
while we are what we are. To make a new 
heaven and a new earth is not a work of re- 
construction, but of regeneration. When God 
puts us right with universal environment there 
will be no discord, that is, no sin. He will 
simply save us from ourselves. 

But the universal necessity is, that we be 
ourselves. I cannot escape from myself. I 
am one, yet dual. The waking of a new nature 
only opens my eyes to the fact that I am a 
unit composed of two varying fractions. There 



64 THE OCTAVE OF BLESSING. 

can be no conflict in an individual self, where 
all is for God and good. But none of us has 
experienced that self. We have only become 
familiar with the law that when we would do 
good, evil is present with us, and the great un- 
spoken cry is, How escape from self ? How 
get rid of what is a part of me ? We run from 
evil, but self is evil, and we cannot cut loose 
from that. Hence the continual conflict that 
rages, and the sighs we must sigh, and the 
groans we must stifle. Occasionally there es- 
capes the lips of one the lamicntation, ' ' Oh 
wretched man that I am ! who shall deliver me 
from the body of this death .?" but it is Hke the 
dull thud of a shrouded form slipping into the 
deep; life's waters close, and the surface is se- 
rene. 

But just here is the blessedness. What 
rouses and pains is the Spirit of God im- 
planted. As the divine indwelling wounds, so 
it will heal. Cause and cure are the same. 
The comfort is in this, that God has already 
given evidence that we shall be saved. It 
means everything: justification — comfort here; 



THE MOURNERS. 65 

glorification — comfort there. Is there more to 
ask ? Who has it has all things, having prom- 
ise of the life that now is and of that which is to 
come. Even now, here, I may have evidence 
of God's favor. I can rejoice that there is 
no condemnation to them which are in Christ 
Jesus. Each of us may claim for himself the 
privilege of our Father's world without de- 
manding with the prodigal son, ' '■ Give me the 
portion of goods that falleth to me." Christ's 
"■ Peace I leave with you," was not to be de- 
ferred altogether to the future life for fulfill- 
ment. Its secret was for those whose hearts 
were knitting to the divine love; interlocking 
with divine tastes and truths. But what of 
the comfort of the by and by } Not in the 
restoration of the dead, not in retrieving for- 
tunes, not in the privilege of future indulgence 
— not in any of these is the highest type of 
comfort that shall make up for earth's mourn- 
ing, but in being admitted into God's confi- 
dence. 

The love of knowledge in man is a magnifi- 
cent evidence of his divine origin. From Eve 



66 THE OCTAVE OF BLESSING. 

until now men have sought to find out the un- 
known, and their appeal has been made to 
serpents, and stars, and stones. But they 
have made this mistake — they have sought 
facts instead of truth, that by which we find 
out facts. God is a fact, but he is the great- 
est of all facts — truth. Everything that is 
must be known as it is connected with him, 
and if it is not known in that way it is not 
known. Nothing is isolated; nothing stands 
alone. All things are as they are because of 
the way in which they stand related to the Dis- 
poser. You cannot unravel God's universe un- 
less you get hold of the thread of truth. Do 
not think to account for anything by its visible 
relations; these are secondary. Newspapers 
report that the fire was kindled by an incendi- 
ary; but the incendiary is bound by laws of 
thought and chains of influence to human 
kind; he acts from a human standpoint, 
(though we repudiate it in every-day language 
and call him inhuman), and to be human is to 
be intimately connected with God. Physicians 
report death by heart disease, but the germ 



THE MOURNERS. 6^ 

lay perhaps two generations a^o in a mental 
state that has converted itself into a physical 
result. But our thoughts are after our kind, 
and our kind is in the image of God. Say 
what we will, our relation is first with the un- 
seen, and we cannot explain the phenomena 
of life upon the mere basis of tangible fact. 
We seek to know why, but God is the Why of 
all things, and to know them we must know 
him. 

Our fond dream is that on the other side of 
the blue we shall know as we are known. We 
are encouraged to believe that there will be 
placed in our hands the thread of Providence 
that shall unravel, one by one, life's tangles. 
We will learn how to read God's heiroglyphics. 
Believest thou that all things work together for 
good } They cannot unless there be one uni- 
fying, loving mind. When God's own enter 
into his Holy Place, and breathe the divine na- 
ture, which is the elixir of eternal life, that 
will be the completion of the transformation 
by the renewing of the mind. No questions 
there. Each for himself can find how circum- 



6S THE OCTAVE OF BLESSING. 

stances, losses, blunders — all, work for us a 
far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. 
And at the Saviour's words to sin's distrac- 
tions, • ' Peace, be still, " there shall be a great 
calm. 

And so the mourner's comfort is not alone 
the comfort of restoration, but the spir- 
itual comfort of explanation, pure, deep, abid- 
ing. Jesus has not only brought life but immor- 
tality to light; and the promise does not rise 
full-orbed until we look afar into the unseen, 
with that faith whose victory overcomes the 
world, and through the gray mists thrust the 
sweet hope begotten by our blessed Lord that 
however fitful life's dream, its night however 
dark, its griefs however bitter, the morn will 
break when the Son of Righteousness shall 
rise, and life will melt into immortality as 
snowflakes softly sink into the bosom of the 
sea, and we shall be satisfied when we awake 
in his likeness. 



THE THIRD BEATITUDE. 



THE MEEK. 



Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the 
earth.— Matt. v. 5. 



It is astonishing how God chooses the fool- 
ish things of the world to confound the wise; 
and the weak things of the world to confound 
the things which are mighty. 

Who of us counts as God does ? And 
yet when all is said and done we find God's 
count is always right. When Christ said that 
the poor in spirit were heirs of glory, men 
must have looked questions. And here is a 
contradiction as great as that. The meek, the 
calm, quiet, oppressed characters of earth shall 
become its proprietors and directors, its vener- 
ated chiefs. But how can that be ? Here is a 
mystery, for it is always a mystery how a 
seeming contradiction can be true. But that 
is what God's government is to most of us — 
contradiction and mystery. It is not until we 



72 THE OCTAVE OF BLESSING. 

get away from uninspired life, and cease look- 
ing at God with our eyes shut, that we come to 
know that truth, from the under side, always 
appears detached, and broken, and fragmen- 
tary; but that the under side of truth is not all. 
We trust that heaven will have its mission of 
reconciliation for us — the reconciliation of op- 
posites, and extremes, and contradictions. 

Now, the third beatitude is closely related to 
the first, and it is understood that some manu- 
scripts place the beatitude for the meek just 
after the beatitude for the poor in spirit. In 
both in much the same general attitude, but they 
look principally in different directions. The 
poor in spirit are meek before God, and the 
meek are without ostentation before men. 
Therefore, one inherits heaven, and the other 
inherits earth. Kindred virtues bring kindred 
rewards. 

What is meekness } It is patience, forbear- 
ance, submission, yielding; want of vanity, re- 
venge, conceit, stubbornness; it is gentleness, 
mildness. But all these are divine touches. 
Will my nature prompt me to bow in rever- 



THE MEEK. 73 

ence, while another deigns not to uncover his 
head ? Will it teach me to bide my time, to 
judge riper judgment than to-day pronounces? 
Not until God takes me into his school and 
bids me learn there. Not one of us inherits 
meekness as we inherit the power of language 
or clear vision. They who go from zone to 
zone of grace have learned to pick their wayv 
They have had God's instruction. Meekness 
is acquired; otherwise it is not genuine. Na- 
ture prompts to retaliation; grace teaches a 
better way. It shows the futility of revenge. 
It points to Calvary, speaking of One, who 
when he was reviled, reviled not again. When 
they persecuted, he blessed. 

So it is in the effort for place and gain. 
*'For it is not in human nature to forego dis- 
tinction and security without a pang." There 
is pleasure in homage, and none of us will see 
himself outstripped if he can help it. Paris 
may decide in favor of Aphrodite, but he must 
expect the hatred of Hera and Athena. 
But mythology is not gospel, and nature is not 
grace. The contour of human action is not 



74 THE OCTAVE OF BLESSING. 

shapely until it has been fashioned by the di- 
vine hand. God would have us know that 
there is but one distinction that is honorable 
and abiding, and that is the distinction of son- 
ship and heir-ship. He makes one grand differ- 
ence among men, and declares that the divid- 
ing line is that which distinguishes righteous- 
ness from unrighteousness. They who have 
gone far enough in the way that leads upward, 
have learned not to become unduly agitated in 
the pursuit of honor. What gain if one gains ? 
What loss if he loses ? As calmly as any phi- 
losopher ever said, ' ' I am a Stoic," he can say, 
" I am a Christian." 

We must not mistake weakness for meek- 
ness. ' ' Meekness is that strength of will — 
that will-power — which comes from trust in 
the living God." It is not rampant, because 
power never is. It is unruffled, because it is 
conscious of strength. The witless may laugh 
vacantly at insults, and schemers pass them by 
out of policy; but meekness is not the property 
of fools or knaves. We must look inside for 
that, expecting it to be a quality of character, 



THE MEEK, 75 

not a covering and trapping. We must not 
think that perfume is a flower because the rose 
we plucked smells sweet Semblance of ex- 
terior proves nothing. My friend may have 
black eyes, but all who have black eyes are not 
my friends. Some culprits at the bar are si-- 
lent; the timid are voiceless before strangers; 
but it does not follow that the speechless are 
either guilty or bashful. Christ was never 
more imposing than when he answered them 
never a word. The meek are patient under 
abuse, because they are so much higher than 
the abuses; they can see over hills and down 
valleys; can look into laws, and effects, and 
eternities, and know the end of it all. They 
ask concerning resentment, "What profit?" 
and bow the head. 

It is thus that the meek have learned respect 
for the Great Conditions of life and happiness. 
There is a pliancy in conduct that is born of 
wisdom. Principle, not application is inflexi- 
ble; the inward state, not the outward act. 
Duty says, "Live," and we live. Duty says 
" Die," and w^e must go. We may live or we 



j6 THE OCTAVE OF BLESSING. 

may die, but living or dying we are the Lord's. 
Meekness has but one will, and that is to do 
the will of the Father. It carries no sceptre. 
It strikes or forbears, speaks or is silent, in re- 
sponse to a divine impulse. Like St. Paul, it 
becomes all things to all men. Meekness 
leaves it to self-will and arrogance to dictate a 
rigid course. It holds it more comely to have 
respect unto others. It is wise enough to fit 
all occasions; is liquid, but penetrating. 

We must not insist on method; method is 
mine, then yours, then everybody's, then no- 
body's. Look sharp to the spirit of the thing, 
and let every one express it in what way he 
will. Methods will be as different as faces, and 
no one has the right to match all eyes with his 
own, or to piece out other people's noses to 
make them look like his. Season all things 
with charity, if not because it is right, then be- 
cause it is wise. Meekness after charity. 
Handsaws are useful articles, but make poor 
parlor ornaments; so personal notions and 
manners serve well in their places, but else- 
where are intrusions. We both love the Lord 



THE MEEK. // 

Christ, you as a follower, I as an ambassador, 
both of us faulty, neither of us perfect, and 
who say which is greater in the kingdom of 
heaven ? The prophet ceases to be a prophet 
when he becomes arrogant. Meekness never 
assumes. Of none else can it be said as it 
was said of Christ that he is meek and lowly 
in heart; for though he spake with authority, 
he said, " Not I, but the Father." Even with 
the "all power" that was given him, he hid 
behind his Father's will. There is no breadth, 
no leniency, no mercy, no meekness like his. 
Meekness develops under discipline. Out of 
a chaos whose disorder is not known, come a 
host of advantages, made the servants of pros- 
perity and success. Mind and heart must sub- 
mit to training, but when God begins his work 
no one knows it. Heaven seldom betrays its 
own secrets. But in course of time the fact 
of power is revealed. Men have called the 
process *' trial," '' misfortune, " and like mis- 
nomers of ignorance, little dreaming that the 
hand of the Almighty was upon them for good. 
You and I have suffered pain and disappoint- 



y^ THE OCTAVE OF BLESSING. 

ment without a syllable of explanation. But 
in these places we must give no ear to the 
tempter's whisper, " Curse God, and die." If 
we did but know what our Lord would do with 
us, we would say, ^* Bless God," and live. 
Whether we recognize it or not, it is God's 
process of creating within us the conditions of 
power, both with heaven and among men. So 
when we receive discipline to advantage, we 
have gone a long way, have learned a great 
deal, even though we do not realize it. 

There is a nobility of character in meekness. 
The untutored will not recognize it until it is 
too late to do reverence, but the nobility is 
there, nevertheless. All grandeur, whether in 
nature, art or letters, is slow to impress itself. 
Most great thirgs are disappointing, for the 
reason that the mind is not trained to take in 
anything but the exterior and commonplace. 
You see the mountain, view the plain, hear 
the orator, and it is different from what you 
expected. You thought you would be over- 
whelmed, transported outside yourself. But it 
was a disappointment, and you went away 



THE MEEK. 79 

chagrined, or trying perhaps to manufacture a 
Httle enthusiasm for appearance' sake. It 
was because you could see and hear only what 
you were accustomed to. What was new, 
what was great, was so far beyond that 
you looked, but did not see; listened, but did 
not hear. When shall we learn that apprecia- 
tion is a process; that we must needs come 
again and again and again before we can real- 
ize worth and greatness. 

But we are ever slow; slow to discern the 
merits of good and the evils of bad. The world 
has never yet been able to receive its great 
men as it should, because one age cannot draw 
out and appreciate qualities that coming gen- 
erations shall look back upon with gratitude. 
It was impossible that Christ should live long. 
The blear-eyed looked, but could not see the 
majesty of his gentleness, the splendor of his 
meek and lowly life, until they had put him 
out of the way, and then it began to be known 
who he was. If he had come, like Mohammed, 
with trumpet and sword, appealing to what 
they were used to, he would have won them 



8o THE OCTAVE OF BLESSING. 

all. But who cared for a calm philosopher, a 
preacher of forgiveness and forbearance, a 
speechless prisoner, a defenseless man, a Sav- 
ior who could not save himself ? A materialistic 
world, wrapped up in the charms of displa3^ 
and size, and noise, pays little attention to 
demonstrations of spirit. If Christ should 
come again to-day, he would still be as far be- 
yond us as he was beyond the people of 
Csesar's time. His real power, clothed in 
matchless gentleness and leniency, would have 
no charm or weight compared with the busi- 
ness activities of our age. His mildness would 
have to be viewed on many sides, pondered, 
tried, before posterity would rise up and call 
him blessed. 

But veneration is the recompense the world 
makes for abuse. The good and great are first 
misunderstood, then martyred, then sainted. 
Many good works they have shown, and for 
want of appreciation, forsooth they are 
stoned ! O foolish world, with the blood of a 
Lincoln, a Columbus, a Stephen, a Socrates, a 
Christ, on your hands, over which you may 



THE MEEK. 8 1 

weep, ^' Out, damned spot," to all eternity, 
when will you learn that the meek shall in- 
herit the earth in spite of persecution ? Their 
fortitude, their helpfulness, their endurance, 
will live when history shall have consigned 
their tormentors to ignominy and shame. The 
thoughts men get from God are immortal; 
their heritage shall never pass. And he has 
given for a surety of possession the radiant 
words of his ever-glorious Son, ' ' Blessed are 
the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. " 

So it appears that a law is working toward 
the fulfillment of the promise, and this again 
is evidence of the truth that righteousness 
is best. To fulfill God's will and get the best 
are as one. It must have been some such 
thought as this that Browning had in mind 
when he wrote: 

'' It's better being good than bad; 

It's safer being meek than fierce; 
It's fitter being sane than mad. 

My own hope is, a sun will pierce 
The thickest cloud earth ever stretched; 

That after Last returns the First, 



62 THE OCTAVE OF BLESSING. 

Though a wide compass round be fetched; 
That what began best can't end worst, 
Nor what God blessed once prove accurst." 
The time has not yet come, when, in the 
fullest sense, the meek inherit the earth, but 
everything points that way. Slowly, slowly 
the civilized. Christianized world is turning 
away from cruelty and blood, and a milder 
reign is being ushered in as gently as the qual- 
ity it represents. When that day comes might 
will no longer make right. There will be no 
longer the aristocracy of blood, or the aristoc- 
racy of wealth, but what has been called an 
aristocracy of intellect and heart. It will be 
a reign of culture, when trained minds and 
disciplined thought will hold the balance of 
power. Difficulties will then no longer be set- 

^M tied with the bayonet, but by just arbitration. 

if* ■-■■•■ _ 

/^f It will be useless to appeal to passion, for a 

higher court of appeal will settle all things, in 
that happy day when the meek shall inherit the 
earth. 

And every indication points toward just that 
state of affairs. That is the meaning of the 



vf • 



THE MEEK. 83 

desire for pure laws and just courts; it is the 
meaning of religious parliaments, and the 
tightened hold politeness and courteous man- 
ners are taking on all classes. 

These are indications of a moral and spir- 
itual change. The " crescent promise " of the 
ascendency of a new dynasty upon earth is ris- 
ing. It will be an age of largeness and sim- 
plicity; harshness forgotten; childlikeness in the 
lead; all things in harmony; angels singing of 
good will to men; heaven honored; a new earth 
wherein dwelleth righteousness, illumined by a 
roseate morn, in whose lap are the pearls of 
peace. [\J 



THE FOURTH BEATITUDE. 



HUNGERING AND THIRSTING. 

Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after 
righteousness: for they shall be filled. — Matt. v. 6. 

** Jesus, Thou joy of loving hearts, 

Thou fount of Ufe, Thou Hght of men, 
From the best bliss that earth imparts, 
We turn unfilled to Thee again." 

Our attention is called to a familiar and 
common experience. The days of Noah are 
not the only ones that have been filled with 
eating and drinking; and eating and drinking 
always imply hunger and thirst. There is no 
other craving like this; as a bodily state it 
stands alone; there can be no mistaking it. 

Therefore when Jesus would impress a great 
truth he clothed it in this clear, striking figure. 
No doubt he was grieved with the prevalence 
of self-satisfaction and .self-confidence of the 
times. While men were in the extremity of 
woe and iniquity, they failed to comprehend 



\ 



88 THE OCTAVE OF BLESSING. 

their situation, did not know their straights, 
did not see that they were lost. Few appre- 
ciated the fact of righteousness, and fewer still 
were concerned about having it and being it. 
The desire of the Jews for a higher life was 
like that of a large part of the un-Christian 
element of to-day — they will be good if it is 
no trouble. There was no intense longing, no 
yearning after truth and righteousness, no 
willingness to sacrifice for it. 

For why should one seek when he is satis- 
fied ? Why be better when he is good enough ? 
Jesus knew men would make little effort while 
there was little to impel them, for a sense of 
need is the first indication of a hopeful spir- 
itual condition. One will never ask the way 
home who does not know he is lost. He who 
is content with the knowledge of the earth will 
not lift his thoughts to the stars. If we are 
perfectly satisfied with the dandelion and the 
clover-blossom, we will not inquire for the 
rose or the chrysanthemum. Satisfaction is 
stagnation. We must need before we seek 
supply. For this reason the man with the 



HUNGERING AND THIRSTING. 89 

muck rake never lifts his eyes. All he wants 
is on the ground. And so Jesus would com- 
mend a deep sense of need unsatisfied, a crav- 
ing for spiritual sustenance that was like hun- 
ger and thirst for food and drink. Blessed, 
said he, are those who thus feel. 

Men's wants are their friends. Their word 
is, '* Silver and gold have I none, but such as 
I have give I thee," and they lead the way to 
good. When want knows itself as want, it is 
on the way to sufficiency. ' ' That he is empty 
of good," one writes, "need discourage no 
one; for what is emptiness but room to be 
filled ? " 

All improvement is in this line. What we 
have we think less of than what we have not; 
as a well-fed man thinks less of the dinner 
past, than the hungry man of the dinner that 
is to come. We are debtors to need; not to 
lack, but to felt lack, felt to the extent of ne- 
cessity. Then it becomes a demand of nature, 
and v/ill not rest until it is satisfied. Nothing 
can put it off. There is no cure for necessity 
but compliance. We make our friendships 



go THE OCTAVE OF BLESSING. 

thus. A sense of loneliness induces us to seek 
the company of others. Our own knowledge 
is not wide enough for the full play of thought. 
And besides, we need to be countenanced in 
our views, corrected in our errors. Who can 
do it ? we ask, and the sensitive mental tenta- 
cles go all about seeking for something to lay 
hold on, James and William have been ac- 
quaintances, but they are transformed into 
friends when we feel they meet our needs. So 
when we come to feel that we need more than 
we have in ourselves, or can find in any other, 
we turn to Jesus our acquaintance, and make 
him Jesus our friend. That is just what being 
a Christian means — "making friends" with 
Jesus. 

But this is only preliminary to a more prom- 
inent thought. What attracts the attention is 
the degree to which the desire for spiritual 
things must impress us before we can expect 
satisfaction. " Hunger and thirst " is a strong 
term and implies a good deal. And this 
phraseology is the exact expression of a con- 
viction that has been growing in the mind of 



HUNGERING AND THIRSTING. 9 1 

the writer for some time, namely, that a vast 
deal depends on whether we long for good, or 
whether- we would merely like to have it 
There is as much difference between the two 
as there is between the feelings of a healthy 
man who has gone without his dinner and is 
actually hungry, and a man whose fancy is 
tickled by the sight of cakes and crullers in a 
baker's window. 

It takes earnestness to bring about results. 
The blessing of God is only for those who 
have an intense desire for it, ''Happy are 
they who hunger and thirst after righteous- 
ness." 

But lest it may appear that this is a princi- 
ple that belongs altogether to the religious 
sphere, let it be noticed that we may observe 
the counterpart of almost every religious pre- 
cept in daily life; and that if we act unques- 
tioningly there with what we call /'nature," it 
is reasonable to transfer the same to religious 
truth and action. Therefore it remains to be 
said that, as a rule, we must be positive and 
intense before we can reasonably expect to win 



92 THE OCTAVE OF BLESSING. 

anything. Carlyle remarks that we must not 
be passive buckets -to be pumped into. We 
have to do our own pumping, or we are never 
filled. Each must have for himself a power- 
ful energy within, or he will accomplish noth- 
ing. Environment is a tremendous power, and 
unless we can match it from within it will hurry 
us to ruin. Around us press ten thousand 
enemies, only waiting opportunity to enter and 
slay. All life is a battle between the within 
and the without, and when the within fails to 
defend itself it must capitulate. What makes 
great men, what makes good men, is only their 
greater force to repulse attacks. We must 
act. When this power fail us doom comes. 

This is what constitutes the " go " in life and 
nature. We see it everywhere. When the 
steam gauge is low the engine runs slowly. 
When the river runs dry the mill grinds no 
corn. Rob Napoleon of his intensity, and he 
will never enter Moscow, Engines, or mills, 
or men, it is all the same thing. We all run 
by some motive power, and the more refined 
the power, the higher the pressure and the 



HUNGERING AND THIRSTING. 93 

harder we go.- Luther was full of it, therefore 
he stood fearless in the Episcopal palace. So 
was Paul. With him it was not, ' ' I delight 
to preach tne gospel," but "Woe unto me if I 
preach not the gospel." Angelo's whole being 
was consuned with his art, so that when one 
asked him why he never married, he replied, 
' ' Painting is my wife and my works are my 
children." What wonder that his frescoes 
astonished the world ! When Agassiz was of- 
fered large sums of money to enter the lecture 
field, he said he was so engaged in his pursuits 
that he had no time to make money. 

It is tenseness that triumphs. The more 
rigid the bow-string, the swifter the arrow flies. 
The finer the stretch of the guitar string, the 
higher the tone it gives. From like treatment 
you may expect like results, from hemp, cat- 
gut or mind. We are all sluggish and will do 
little unless we are keyed up to it. No one 
knows what he can do until the emergency 
comes that hauls taut his slackened energies. 
The wise world has said that ' ' necessity is the 
mother of invention, " and the saying is an il- 



94 THE OCTAVE OF BLESSING. 

lustration of the principle in hani. Anything 
that puts us under desperate circumstances 
stimulates to action. Most people work hard- 
est under pressure. 

Wishing never made a man a man. It never 
saved any one from drowning. * ' O^ how I wish 
I could speak French," you sigh; and some 
toothless crone is heartless enough to remind 
you of the proverb, ' * If wishes were horses 
beggars might ride." Then when you put your 
teeth together and say, " I will learn French," 
she whispers respectfully in your ear another 
proverb, "Where there's a will, there's a 
way." All our wishing is just so. We must 
put an intensive to every desire, and say, " I 
want it — very much." 

Now all we have to do is to carry this idea 
over into this particular part of the sermon on 
the mount. We shall find it is not enough to 
admire the teachings of Christ, or to wish our- 
selves better, or even to have a nominal desire 
for deeper spiritual life. Blessed are they 
which do hunger and thirst after righteousness. 
If righteousness is of great value it is worth 



HUNGERING AND THIRSTING. 95 

longing for, and that precedes striving for. If 
I see one gazing with wistful eyes on God's 
good things I know it will not be long until he 
will begin to fill himself. We are hot in pur- 
suit of gain and glory and all too slow in seek- 
ing good. Be positive; be intense; want good 
very much; think of it; dream of it; lave in it; 
hunger and thirst for it. Do not tell me you 
desire righteousness; that is not all — you must 
long for it. Do not say you dislike sin; that is 
insipid; you must hate it. God likes decided 
natures, and this beatitude is for them. There 
is no place in his regard for luke-warm Laodi- 
ceans. 

We all differ from one another, but there is 
no reason why all should not rise; there is no 
reason why one should not be better to-mor- 
row than to-day. If he has the divine enthu- 
siasm within he will be. That is the absorp- 
tive power that extracts the nectars of life and 
sweetens our own natures. 

The poet gazes about, " his eye in a fine 
frenzy rolling, " and sees what only his poetic 
nature could. When we too have an eye for 



96 THE OCTAVE OF BLESSING. 

holy things, we shall see what others cannot. 
When we are touched b}- divine incentive then 
we can magnetize the good and draw it to us. 
Neither the good we get nor the evil we ex- 
orcise is by anything but the working of an im- 
bued heart. Oft times men grow no better 
because their minds are too sordid to aspire. 
Their sins do not leave them because they will 
not push them out. Such need daily some 
voice to say to them, ' ' This kind cometh not 
forth but by prayer and fasting." When St. 
Paul wanted to show that the supreme stand- 
ard of resistance to evil had not yet been 
reached, he wrote to the Hebrews, ' ' Ye have 
not yet resisted unto blood striving against 
sin." Our Saviour's words to his disciples 
were, "Strive to enter in." In all Scripture 
there is no encouragement to inactivity. 
Everything goes to show that man must love 
the Lord his God with all his heart, soul, 
strength and mind. He must be ravished with 
the beauty of spiritual blessings. Aye, as the 
hart panteth after the water brook, so must 
his soul pant for God. That was the Psalm- 



HUNGERING AND THIRSTING. 97 

ist's expression for hungering and thirsting 
after righteousness. David and Jesus speak in 
the same strain. 

It is always pardonable to go into ecstasy 
over the matchless character and power of God. 
Not long ago the author took up Joseph Cook's 
lecture on ' ' Communion with God as Per- 
sonal," in which he quotes this Boston march- 
ing-song: 

** Bounds of sungroups none can see; 
Worlds God droppeth on his knee; 
Galaxies that loftiest swarm, 
Float before a loftier Form. 

** Mighty, the speed of suns and worlds; 
Mightier Who these onward hurls; 
Pure the conscience fiery bath; 
Purer fire God's lightning hath. 

' ' Brighter He, who maketh bright 
Jasper, beryl, chrysolite; 
Lucent more than they, whose hands 
Girded up Orien's bands. 

' ' Sweet the spring, but sweeter still 
He who doth its censers fill; 
Good is love, but better who 
Giveth love its power to woo. 



98 THE OCTAVE OF BLESSING. 

" Lo, the Maker ! greater He, 
Better, than His works must be: 
Of the works the lowest stair 
Thought can scale, but fainteth there. 

' * Thee with all our strength and heart, 
God, we love for what Thou art; 
Ravished we, obedient now, 
Only, only perfect Thou ! " 

The career of Cardinal Richelieu would 
make a volume of instruction on the power of 
intensity. He was ambitious of power and 
loved it "as Michael Angelo loved art and 
Palestrina loved music," Dr. Lord tells us. 
' ' Power was his master passion, and consumed 
all other passions; and he resolved to gain it in 
any way he could — by flatteries, by duplicities, 
by sycophancies, by tricks, by lies, even by 
services." He became all things to all men; 
he was learned, wise, devout, frivolous, and 
witty by turns. He had the adaptability of a 
Paul or a Chesterfield. But he used it all for 
a single end. In court and cabin he went 
about with an insatiable appetite, hungering 



HUNGERING AND THIRSTING. 99 

and thirsting after power, until he ruled king 
and people. 

Here is but an example. What Richelieu 
attained in the kingdom of France under Louis 
XIII, any of us may attain in the kingdom of 
heaven. It is not a question of ability so 
much as of intensity. How much of God's 
good we get depends on how much we want of 
it. The wise Power above does not cram 
those who do not crave. 

And the blessedness of it all is that ' ' they 
shall be filled. " That divine indwelling, that 
mind of Christ imparted to the extent of re- 
pleteness is happiness itself. And if it is hap- 
piness itself, and we begin to be filled here, we 
ought to begin to be happy here, ought to en- 
joy heaven in proportion as we have heaven 
imparted to us. Of course we cannot be com- 
pletely happy until we are completely filled; as 
hungry men are only less hungry when they 
have eaten a little. And the beatitude is that 
they ' ' shall be " filled, that is, in coming time, 
in God's good time. The bread and water of 
life will infuse new strength here and now, but 



lOO THE OCTAVE OF BLESSING. 

not until by and by shall we cry in satisfaction, 
Enough. 

And the closing word is that it was God who 
woke to an intense desire, by sending right- 
eousness in perfect pattern and in human 
form. It is incarnate in Jesus Christ. The 
character of that one cannot but engender a 
desire to be like it. Go look on the ideal 
majesty of that life, on it marvelous simplicity, 
its stern obedience, its tender sympathy, its 
spotless purity, its uncompromising attitude 
toward hypocrisy, its untold sacrifice, its moral 
victories, its final triumph. It is the divine 
righteousness as shown in Christ that awakens 
hungering after itself; and the great thing is 
that there is enough that all may be satisfied. 



THE FIFTH BEATITUDE. 



THE MERCIFUL. 

Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain 
mercy. — Matt. v. 7. 

Mercy has never had such a Hving exponent 
as Christ. That quahty of heart that appeals 
to every condition of men and state of mind, 
and wins its way wherever it is known, was in- 
carnated in the Man of Nazareth to an extent 
surpassing knowledge. Most fitting was it that 
he should pronounce the blessing upon those 
who so closely conform to his character that 
they have a right to the name of which he 
must remain forever the type. 

Christ could not have been what he was and 
be otherwise than filled with mercy — mercy 
full. There was a marvelous equilibrium in 
his nature which sought to bring all things to a 
just balance. Mercy we are wont to think of 
as the contrary of justice, but after all, it is 
not so much unlike it. Mercy lends to an 



104 THE OCTAVE OF BLESSING. 

equilization of rights and privileges that brings 
about a state of justice. There is a perfect 
balance in God's requirements. He will have 
all men on an equality, so far as privileges are 
concerned. He justifies no man in setting him- 
self up at his neighbor's expense. 

There is a law of fair play in this God's uni- 
verse, that seeks to equalize things and put all 
men on the same footing. No one can do 
damage to his neighbor with impunity. The 
wrong done finds its way home. The one who 
works himself into favor or place by unfair 
means must wait his turn to be dealt with. 
The sabre of justice smites both ways, if it 
smites one way. The one who hinders is 
hindered himself; the helper is helped in the 
long run. At least if that is not always true 
there is a law working toward that end, and it 
becomes quite plain where pure religion has 
gained a foothold. Christ said, ' ' Whatsoever 
ye would that men should do to you, do ye 
even so to them." That means that every 
soul is to have a fair chance. It puts a stigma 
on the one who wants more than his share of 



THE MERCIFUL. I05 

courtesies or dividends. V/hen the golden rule 
becomes a golden habit, there will be fewer 
chasms between men; they will stand where 
God designed they should, more on a level and 
nearer together. 

Mercy makes room for privilege. It opens 
the door to opportunity. It neither muzzles 
the ox nor hastens foreclosures. Heaven is its 
home, and where mercy is, the promise of the 
kingdom of heaven has been measurably ful- 
filled. 

For some reason or other there appears to 
be too little reverence for certain well-defined 
spiritual laws, which hold good on the stock- 
exchange as well as in church. There seems 
to be a prejudice against anything that savors 
of religion, until it is found to be advantageous, 
and it is then adopted for policy's sake. Of 
course there is no merit in that, but the fact 
serves to shov/ the wide reach of much of gos- 
pel truth. In this way people of the world 
will repudiate the spiritual law that the merci- 
ful obtain mercy, until they see it verified again 
and again in every-day life. Such verifications 



I06 THE OCTAVE OF BLESSING. 

do not form the widest scope of the applica- 
tion of the beatitude, nor the highest reference, 
but they may open the door to the highest. 
The highest reference is to God's mercy ex- 
tended to man for man's mercy to man. Yet 
if God permeate all spiritual law, is it not all 
God's mercy still ? 

Briefly stated the law is this: What we are 
to others, others are to us. There is no stereo- 
typed course of conduct with us, and people 
change their attitudes toward us when we 
change our attitudes toward them. If you deal 
honestly with men they will be more honest 
with you than otherwise they would be. A 
kindness extended is likely to be kindly re- 
ceived. There is a proverb which declares 
that " Respect commands respect," and it is 
only a fragment from the older proverb that 
mercy obtains mercy. The respect one be- 
stows will be returned. A gentlemanly rebuke 
will elevate one, even in the estimation of a 
bully. We admire Christ because we think he 
has respect for us, and love him because he 
first loved us. That is, human nature re- 



THE MERCIFUL, I07 

sponds to an attraction and returns smile for 
smile. 

But it has its repellent power too, and re- 
sents unkindness and encroachment. It is no 
cheat to cheat a cheater, is one of the world's 
working maxims, and everybody is glad to see 
the biter bitten. If you turn the cold shoulder 
to others, you must expect to be frozen out in 
turn. The mercy one refuses will be refused; 
the consideration he does not pay, he must not 
expect to receive. Do not put your head un- 
der your wing and then wonder that the other 
birds of the forest do not sing from the boughs 
of your tree. He who would have friends 
must show himself friendly; sour face meets 
sour face in the mirror of human action. Your 
reflection moves backward or forward as you 
do. Opposition begets opposition. The noose 
tightens with a contrary pull. 

It is human nature to give tit for tat. Eye 
for eye and tooth for tooth was the old law; 
mercy for mercy is just as old, and only 
another form of the same thing. When Christ 
bade men return good for evil, it was but a re- 



I08 THE OCTAVE OF BLESSING. 

adjustment, a changing of the channel. There 
was no new law created for the course of 
kindly action. Christ simply made use of the 
old law that like is met by like, w^hether it be 
good or whether it be evil. The newness of it 
and the gospel of it is simply this, that Christ 
would have us make the advances. Instead of 
every one getting evil for evil, he w^ould have 
us break with the law for once, and return 
good for evil, only to experience its workings 
again in correspondence with our changed con- 
duct. The old way took people down hill at a 
fatal rate. The gospel puts on the breaks, re- 
verses the engine, and goes up again over the 
rails of the same law. Christ came not to de- 
stroy but to fulfill; he came to show the possi- 
bilities of human nature, and give a peep into 
the divine; came to declare the far-reaching 
truth that with v/hat judgment men shall 
judge they shall be judged; and with what 
measure they meet it shall be m^easured to 
them again; came to declare that the voice of 
thunder or the voice of music, as it comes 
from God or man, is but the echo of the beat- 



THE MERCIFUL. I09 

ing of the heart, but our own selves coming 
home. 

If there were a greater appreciation of the 
quahty of mercy it would create soul-thirst for 
more, for the mercy that man receives of man 
is insignificant in comparison v/ith that he re- 
ceives from God. x'Vnd the contrast between 
men's merciless attitude toward one another, 
and God's merciful attitude toward them, is a 
still greater contrast. 

In the parable of the unmerciful servant an 
almost prepo.sterous supposition is made: that 
of a debtor being generously forgiven a debt of 
tens of millions of dollars, and immediately 
going out and siezing by the throat another 
who could not pay him a few paltry pennies, 
and casting him into prison. But the contrast 
is not over-drawn. Not yet have men begun 
to comprehend the meaning of mercy. They 
neither realize obligation for what has been 
received already, nor dream what is still in 
store. Yet in a general way we expect great 
things from heaven. Every boon the mind 
conceives it makes petition for, only to repine 



no THE OCTAVE OF BLESSING. 

against Providence if the request meets a nega- 
tive reply. 

What do we expect from heaven ? Just 
what the unmerciful servant expected from his 
master in a superlative degree, and just what 
he would not extend to his own debtor — for- 
giveness. The inconsistency of conduct is that 
we ask a thousand times more of God than we 
are willing. to do ourselves; that we cannot see 
that the forgiveness we hope for ought justly to 
be commensurate with the forgiveness we 
show. We are slow to see that if we expect 
God to blot out all our slights and sins toward 
him that he tells us are so enormous that we 
cannot comprehend them, we are very much 
remiss when we cherish grievances against our 
neighbors for sins only a fraction as great. 
Forgive as you would be forgiven, is our Lord's 
requirement. ' ' For if ye forgive men their 
trespasses your heavenly Father will also for- 
give you; but if ye forgive not men their tres- 
passes, neither will your Father forgive your 
trespasses. " 

O, the fullness of divine pardon ! How can 



THE MERCIFUL. Ill 

men expect God's smile, when they have no 
smile for their brothers ? How can they ask 
him for salvation from sin, when they will 
show no quarter to paltry offenses ? O my 
friends, the sweetness and majesty of a great 
life are in that act of forgiveness. There is 
nothing that is nearer the heart of creation 
than the power to remit just dealing with 
wrongs. "To err is human; to forgive divine." 
Impulse may pronounce judgment and penalty, 
but we may not take impulse for guide to the 
kingdom of heaven; we neither love nor respect 
it. It is only when our souls grow large with 
love and knowledge, that we can realize the 
starry heights to which that clemency of spirit 
belongs. When we become denizens of the 
haunts of magnanimous conduct, we shall press 
less rudely hearts that God yet lets beat, and 
the best thought of the wise world will rise up 
and call us blessed. When we can bless them 
that curse us, and pray for them that despite- 
fully use us and persecute us, we become heirs 
of heaven's honors; we have promise of a place 
beside Jesus and Stephen. 



I 1 2 THE OCTAVE OF BLESSING. 

Another expectation is that heaven v/ill 
supply divine help. Yet why expect 
what we will not give ? We help each 
other in a way, and yet it is to be feared 
we are only in the rudiments. Our charities 
are warped — our aids one-sided. Our help is 
chiefly along the line of cast, for unfortunate 
people of our own level. We help the poor 
with a pole. Contact is degrading and dis- 
tance is at a premium. Each of us is ready 
to secure a back seat and let the proceeds go 
to the support of a nurse or minister. Few are 
strong enough to bear the rebuke, ' ' He eateth 
with publicans and sinners." Help with us 
often means much smoke and little fire; great 
noise and nothing done. What can you tell 
from the treasurer's books of the good done ? 
Charity begins at home, we are told, so we 
build and adorn to please our tastes, and re- 
ligion becomes the servant of desire. When 
shall we come to a knowledge of the truth that 
the highest worship of God is not cathedral 
worship, but worship in office and home, in 
street and store and shop; worship that lends 



THE MERCIFUL. II3 

the hand of help, not simply where it is 
wanted, but where it is needed. It is that 
that pleases God, and such incense shall ever 
rise. " Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one 
of the least of these my brethren ye have done 
it unto me." 

It is the mercy we show that argues mercy 
for us. We all stop far short of what we 
might do, yet there is no limit to expectation 
from the Almighty. We must remember the 
established proportion, that as we forgive we 
are forgiven; as we show compassion and 
friendliness and help, we receive. We need 
to turn our prayers back on ourselves and ask 
how much of what we petition for ourselves 
we grant to others; for just that seems to be 
the basis of expenditure in the economy of the 
kingdom of heaven. 

Still another expected favor is consideration. 
Some of us are forever excusing ourselves, on 
the ground that heaven knows and the Lord is 
kind. ' ' Lord, remember my weakness and 
judge in mercy," is a petition, which, the 
higher it rises, the harder it falls on the head 



114 THE OCTAVE OF BLESSING. 

of the suppliant, if he does not carry out his 
own pohcy in his deahngs with men. There 
is room for a vast deal of criticism upon pro- 
fessing Christians, because of harsh judgments. 
That love that suffereth long and is kind, that 
rejoiceth not in evil, that beareth all things, 
that never faileth, has not yet ripened into 
perfection among the great body of believers. 
The common lack of leniency is lamentable. 
"I would not do so, therefore he is wrong," is 
a superficial judgment that most people are 
guilty of passing. That compassion that filled 
the bursting heart of the Christ when he 
prayed, " for they know not what they do," is 
only in germ, alas ! in many hearts. We stand 
among the crowd of accusers that hound the 
poor woman taken in sin; but the Master of 
men can dismiss with a smile and the words, 
' ' Go and sin no more. " The lesson is slowly 
learned, the lesson our Father would have us 
learn early and well, that kindness is noble, 
and that mercy is more becoming than judg- 
ment. The disposition to be considerate is as 
much of a virtue and far more Christly than 



THE MERCIFUL. I I 5 

that which sees nothing but fault. The zeal- 
ous without knowledge have always come with 
power and thunder. Not such have the spirit 
of Jesus. Mercy must meet mercy. The boon 
we long for from heaven, we must ourselves 
confer upon men. The patience, the forbear- 
ance, the consideration which God exercises 
toward men, and which makes us venerate and 
love him so, calls for a like disposition on 
our part. Such logic is apparent, for consist- 
ency defends itself. 

So, then it is not the mercy we show, but 
the mercy that is shown us that is the great 
thing. Human mercy is admirable, but divine 
mercy is transcendent. God's is the anteced- 
ent of whatever we may do, and the reward 
after we are done. His mercy makes merci- 
ful, and when all is over crowns us with itself. 
It bounds all action. Therefore, not the mer- 
ciful, but the mercy obtained is above all, for 
that mercy is God. 

Happy the man who attains divine favor ! 
God deals bountifully with him as he has dealt 
with others. As he has done it shall be done 



Il6 THE OCTAVE OF BLESSING. 

to him. The compassion he has extended is a 
thousand times returned. ' ' Come ye blessed 
of my Father," says the voice of One ever 
welcome to his own, ' ' inherit the kingdom 
prepared for you from the foundation of the 
world." And the everlasting doors are opened; 
countless blessings break upon the head; the 
morning joy has come. 



THE SIXTH BEATITUDE. 



HEART PURITY. 



Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see 
God.— Matt. V. 8. 



It has been said that ''no man hath seen 
God at any time." And yet to see God has 
been the desire in all ages of those who in any 
way care for that which pertains to another 
world than this work-a-day one. But the de- 
sire has been too sensual, and the very nature 
of it makes it impossible. How can we see a 
pure spirit-God with eyes all polluted with 
sights and scenes unholy ? It is to be left to 
other eyes than those with which we gaze 
sensuously to see God. For those who have 
heart-eyes, eyes of love, desire for goodness 
and truth, it is for such eyes of the soul that 
the vision of God is reserved. It is to them 
that the promise is made. We must never ex- 
pect here or hereafter to see God as we see 
ordinary things in life. We shall see God as 



120 THE OCTAVE OF BLESSING. 

we see truth, as we see holiness in the night 
time when the hds are closed, and darkness is 
all around. That is the way we shall get the 
vision if we ever prove ourselves worthy of the 
vision. 

While Jesus talked with his disciples, 
one of them broke in with the exclamation: 
' ' Lord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth 
us." Ah, yes, that would sufBce many a one 
who wishes to see, but cannot, and never will. 
But Jesus patiently told the waiting listeners 
that the vision depended not on the presenta- 
tion but on the preparation. It was not a matter 
of the Father showing himself, but a question 
of their being able to see the Father when he 
was before them. He and his Father were 
one in all things — the same in spirit, will, love. 
The exterior was not Jesus. Jesus — the Jesus 
that he was above all appearance — was to be 
seen v/ith an eye they had not yet learned to 
know of, the eye of the soul. If they were 
expecting to see a God with their senses, one 
to be discerned and enjoyed after the manner 
of the flesh, they must know that he was of 



HEART PURITY. 1 2 1 

no such form and appearance, was not to be 
enjoyed in that way. He would have them 
know that he himself was more than they saw 
with the outward eye. That which could only 
be seen through contemplation, that was the 
real Jesus, and if they could not see that in 
him, how could they see it elsewhere ? If they 
could not behold God the Father in the clear- 
est manifestation ever made of him, how 
could they see him in that which was less clear.? 
And so our Saviour sought to show that we 
must look below surfaces. In the good and 
great there is a vast deal more than comes to 
the outside; that is only a covering, a vessel, a 
temple. Incarnation is but the garb of divine 
goodness. It was the great heart of Christ 
that lay beneath it all, and made all he did in- 
significant in comparison with what he was and 
could do, that gave the true idea of God. 
Whoever could lay aside the seen, and close 
his eyes to everything but that fact, had seen 
God. But that was so new to them that they 
must have questioned as did Nichodemus, 
" How can these things be ? " 



122 THE OCTAVE OF BLESSING. 

But they, as we, must learn that hfe is what 
we make it, and that the vision of God de- 
pends not on the "showing of the Father," 
but in the power of the heart to see. The 
Father had been before them all that time, and 
yet neither Philip nor the others knew him. 
And the Father comes to-day, again and 
again, and we know him -not. It is not be- 
cause he is not manifest, but because his mani- 
festation is not known. It is the inner side of 
life that we must study, that which lies under 
the exterior of circumstance. When we do 
that we shall know God, even in this life. 

Therefore if we do not see God it is because 
of heart impurity, stains on the being. We 
question why we do not see God. But if we 
had the mind of Christ we should know Christ. 
That is, if we were more of a piece with him 
and conformed more to his thought and heart, 
we should be better able to read the will of 
God, and to discern the mind of the spirit; 
for we are continually asking about the will of 
God, the beauty of God, the providence and 
government of God. And it all comes to us 



HEART PURITY. 123 

— all this knowledge we seek of him — in pro- 
portion to our unsulliedness before him. After 
all, that is the greatest obstruction to vision. 
It does not depend so much on mental vigor 
and acuteness, as on a heart at one with God. 
Not so much on a near prospect as on a cloud- 
less sky. 

If one would really see God, if he has any- 
thing more than a mere curiosity to behold 
him, then he must be cleansed, purified. Shall 
the unclean gaze upon the Immaculate.'' With- 
out holiness no man can see the Lord, after- 
ward or now. Blessed are the heart-pure, the 
heart-cleansed. Here we are again at the 
heart, the citadel that Jesus came to this world 
to take. He^ did not ask for good conduct 
alone, for he knew that could be patched on 
anywhere. True, he desired righteousness, 
but he knew that righteousness that did not 
grow was a dead righteousness and could 
be put off as a garment. It was a living good- 
ness that he wanted, goodness that got its 
power from connection with the heart, that 
partook of the whole nature, that was supplied 



124 THE OCTAVE OF BLESSING, 

and kept alive by conviction, right motive, 
God's breath of inspiration. Therefore Jesus 
never prescribed rules, or forced conduct as 
we do. He would seem to teach that pre- 
scriptions are useless as far as right life is con- 
cerned. Why ask a man of no conviction on 
the subject to abstain from any given sin — the 
drinker from his cup, 'the gambler from his 
game, the lascivious from vice, the Sabbath 
breaker from his profanation ? It is worthless, 
waste, an idle reformation, like tying twigs on 
the apple-tree. Or, as Jesus said in speaking 
with his disciples at another time, *'No man 
putteth a piece of new cloth unto an old gar- 
ment; for that which is put in to fill 
it up taketh from the garment, and 
the rent is made worse." I could not 
ask a man not used to any form of rever- 
ence not to take the name of the Lord in vain. 
Why should he abstain for my request. I am 
not reforming him, or making him better. I 
have only put a new patch into an old gar- 
ment; I have simply prescribed for him a tem- 
porary morality that is not his after all, but 



HEART PURITY. 1 25 

my own. But that is too often our fault in 
dealing with wrong-doing — dictating a course 
of action that will wither and die as soon as 
we cease the exercise of personal influence. 
Jesus never undertook to reform so. He be- 
gan at the center, and would have a man right 
from a motive, right because he is right all the 
way through. There will be no patchwork 
about it, nothing constrained or unreasonable. 
It will be natural; the good conduct will be 
part of the man himself, not a part of me or 
you. 

If we could take a lesson in reform from the 
words of Jesus it would profit us all. For one 
thing we would learn that we must first incul- 
cate a motive in man as a soil out of which ac- 
tion can grow. He must act on principle or 
else he is acting mechanically. Another thing 
is that we shall have more patience and charity 
for those who do not conform to our own 
standard of morality. We shall simply turn 
to our own selves and notice how we never do 
as urged is right, until we have succeeded in 
arousing a motive. Then we do it as a reason- 



126 THE OCTAVE OF BLESSING. 

able service. It must not discourage or disap- 
point us that reforms in life are so slow. Re- 
member we are too often working at the wrong 
end, and are trying to get people to do right 
before we have got them to think right. You 
cannot break a swearer of his profanity until 
you have touched the springs of action and he 
has learned reverence. When the good people 
used to say to the little boy of no Christian 
training whatever, when they discovered him 
on Sunday morning with his fishing pole in 
hand: " You must not fish on Sunday; don't 
you know it is wicked ? " that was merely a 
waste of reproof so far as the boy was con- 
cerned. Why should he not fish ? If he did 
not, it was simply that they made the request 
and he abstained because he was asked, not 
that he had any respect for the day. There 
was no piety in it for the boy, any more than 
there was any sin in it before he knew he 
ought not. 

Now let the boy stand for the masses of 
greedy, selfish labor unions, and grasping, un- 
just monopolies and the whole principle on 



HEART PURITY. 12/ 

which reform must proceed is before us. There 
is no virtue, so far as the people themselves 
are concerned, if they leave off this or that 
from any other motive than that of conviction 
of right, if they are pure on the outside only 
and are not pure in heart. And the spirit of 
the gospel is that we seek to turn the heart 
God-ward, and be not too impatient of right- 
eousness without until there is righteousness 
within. That is what Jesus would have us 
know as the true way of life and thought. He 
cares a thousand times less for one good deed 
than for the good heart that was the mother 
of it. The pure mother will bring forth a 
whole brood of pure deeds. 

But let us not use the word "pure" in too 
broad a sense. All sin is impurity, but there 
are some that are particularly so designated — 
sins of such a nature that it is considered a 
very delicate matter even to refer to them. 
Yet what indeed is so deadening to the sense 
of right and of truth as any form of indul- 
gence in this kind of impurity. And the bane- 
ful influences of a life soiled in sin by any one 



128 THE OCTAVE OF BLESSING. 

of the various forms of violation of the sev- 
enth commandment are not to be confined 
alone to any class, or age, or sex. A thous- 
and times it has been verified that a first sense 
of fitness and right has been altogether forgot- 
ten, and a heartlessness and a dullness induced 
that are criminal. In words familiar because 
so true to life: 

*' Vice is a monster of such hideous mien, 
That to be hated needs but to be seen. 
But once beheld, familiar with her face. 
We first endure, then pity, then embrace." 

Do not let me be understood as speaking of 
gross immorality but of refined sin, sin of 
thought, sin that lurks in the shadows, that 
breaks in unbidden without a knock at the 
door. That is heart sin, the beginning of all 
the others, and that is why it is so carefully to 
be guarded against. Jesus did not wait to re- 
prove the already hardened; he said, " He that 
looketh on a woman to lust after her hath com- 
mitted adultery already with her in his heart." 
That is, he sought to correct the thing in its 



HEART PURITY. 129 

insipiency, while yet it was hidden and un- 
known, something that had not gone so far it 
could not be driven out. Remember it is the 
pure in heart, not the pure outwardly, of 
whom the Master says, They are blessed. 

There must be no tampering with tempta- 
tion, no dallying with the forbidden. The sin 
in the heart is no less a sin because it is in the 
heart. It is tangible before God, and will 
make itself tangible in life, if it is not held 
back. It is fatal sometimes to think. The 
serpent cannot be held in the hand without 
danger. ' ' Can a man take fire in his bosom, 
and not be burned ? Can one go upon hot 
coals, and his feet not be burned ? " You can- 
not handle pitch and not be defiled. You can- 
not indulge in the lascivious look without a 
stain on the moral character. It weaves into 
the make-up; it poisons the thought habit; it 
defiles the man. Little by little it 

' ' hardens all within. 
And petrifies the feeling. " 

Day-dreams indulged are dangerous, and 



I30 THE OCTAVE OF BLESSING. 

when they are admitted ' ' farewell to all purity 
and peace. From the serpent's egg shall 
break forth the cockatrice, and its end shall 
be a fiery flying serpent." 

Of each indulgence it may be asked, What 
profit ? This is a sin whose returns are not 
lasting, which, no matter how long its prom- 
ised good may be followed, only mocks and re- 
tires as the seeker of pleasure pursues. There 
is no phantom like that of lust in any form. 
There is no deception that so utterly disap- 
points in its every profession as does this. In- 
stead of satisfaction, it creates desire; the 
pleasure was not this time — it will be in the 
next. Each indulgence in forbidden thought 
begets two others more gross than itself. 
Multiplicity creates habit; habit becomes na- 
ture. For the pleasure expected — remorse, 
ashes, shame. 

For, be not deceived, you cannot keep it 
within your own bosom. Putridity of heart 
will poison the atmosphere of action. Good 
intentions languish and become sickly; dignity 
suffers; simplicity of conduct dies, or leads a 



HEART PURITY. 1 3 1 

hypocritical existence. It is the inevitable 
penalty of transgression, the penalty paid in 
this life, the penalty which often is not recog- 
nized, and the criminal wonders about results, 
not thinking that these results are the results 
of other results. It is the penalty of languid 
will, indefinite action, remorse, failure. A 
great many praying people have need to pray 
often, '' Cleanse thou me from secret faults." 
We may be sure that as long as the heart is 
not pure there will be no vision of God. Those 
who are freest from all heart impurities will 
get the clearest vision of the Father and the 
Father's will. They will live the freest life, 
will have the clearest consciousness of right 
and of duty; they will be happiest. So that 
we may conclude it all by saying that purity, 
happiness and the sight of God are as one. 



THE SEVENTH BEATITUDE. 



PEACE AND ITS BLESSINGS. 



Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be 
called the children of God.— Matt. v. 9. 



If Christ had not placed a high estimate on 
peace, he would not have offered so high a re- 
ward to the promoters of it; for what honor is 
greater than the distinction of sons of God ? 

We cannot find grounds for the belief that 
the things of God are working at variance 
with one another, and that discord is the law 
of the universe. It seems more consistent to 
hold that God is a God of peace, dwelling in 
things and men richly, notwithstanding a seem- 
ing antagonism. Peace is harmony, oneness, 
and we cannot think that in the one God, in 
the Prince of Peace, divergence dwells, or 
variation or opposition. 

But when we hear the same Christ who 
said, "Peace I leave with you," saying, ''I 
came not to send peace, but a sword," we are 



136 THE OCTAVE OF BLESSING. 

strangely at a loss how to reconcile it all. 
Now, we must know that God is of such 
nature that he cannot be at peace with evil. 
The carnal mind is enmity against God. Re- 
conciliation will never come about between 
good and evil. Light and darkness, Christ 
and Belial, are by nature at perpetual war. 
Jesus came not to bring peace between the 
powers of righteousness and unrighteousness, 
or to propose compromise. It must be a war- 
fare, entering even into the household, and 
separating the nearest relatives, bringing com- 
motion into the home and state. But all good 
is in harmony v/ith itself. There are no jar- 
rings in the kingdom of heaven. Its law is 
the law of peace, and he who is at one with 
the kingdom will be at one with himself, even 
though he be in the midst of distractions. 

That is to say, Jesus came to separate good 
and evil in purpose and life, and there can be 
no separation without friction and enmity. 
That was the sword. But the estate into 
which the separated are called is one of abso- 
lute harmony. That was the peace. Christ 



PEACE AND ITS BLESSINGS, l^? 

came not to bring peace between man and 
man as these were the representatives of the 
powers of evil and of good, but to bring peace 
between man and God, afterward peace with 
all that is at peace with God. Peace was to 
be within the heart of the righteous, but a 
sword in his hand against evil. Both are from 
God, and both came of the very nature of 
righteousness. It could not be otherwise. 

Unless it comes to us.so the beatitude plays 
false to all spiritual conditions; is out of joint 
with the body of truth as Christ spoke it and 
as his disciples illustrated it. Wrong is not to 
be winked at; .truth must not be trampled. 
Yet for all that, certain considerations enter in 
to determine the burden of claim to be on the 
side of peace. And how.'' If right must be ar- 
rayed against wrong, then it ought to be noth- 
ing but right against nothing but wrong; and 
how often can it be said, "All good is on this 
side, all evil on that " ? Generally there is 
both good and bad on both sides, but if each 
strives with the other, then good and evil are 
not only at war with each other, but with them- 



13^ THE OCTAVE OF BLESSING, 

selves as]well, which is triumph for Satan, but 
detriment to the kingdom of God. These 
things ought not so to be. Let unrighteous- 
ness war with itself if it will, but in God's king- 
dom righteousness and peace will kiss each 
other. 

What, then, shall we say ? Shall wrong 
pass unhindered ? Let us make an appeal to 
our Lord, and who ever made so peaceful a 
crusade, led so noiseless a movement, accom- 
plished so effectual a revolution as he ? When 
he saw the hypocrisy of the times, the slavish- 
ness to form, the oppression and moral rot, in- 
stead of calling down twelve legions of angels 
to instigate a reform and put v/alls about wick- 
edness, he used the other method, so much 
wiser that men are only beginning even now to 
put it into general use, that of putting the bur- 
den on men's consciences and showing them to 
themselves in their own true light. And he 
did it so boldly, so truly that he died for it. 
If he had led an insurrection, great multitudes 
would have flocked to his standard; for men 
will sacrifice to fight. 



PEACE AND ITS BLESSINGS. I39 

And SO it has ever been; is now. Our noisy 
reforms insist on obedience or punishment. 
It is the old cry, * 'Koran or the sword." They 
are intended for good, but the support is from 
that element in human nature that delights in 
strife, and the excitement of the fray is more 
pleasing than the moral victory proposed. 
And if the victory comes what is it ? Material 
conquest; temporary gain. It shows the tri- 
umph of power, not the triumph of virtue. 
There can be no real moral victory unless it be 
the victory over affection or will; that is, over 
heart or mind. Nothing else lasts. People 
send out missionaries on all kinds of good er- 
rands, then grovv^ livid because vice is not sup- 
pressed in a twelve-month. Then follow po- 
lice raids, and imprisonments, and hatred, the 
result of it all being to make the transgressor 
more determined than ever to succeed in his 
transgression. 

It is thus our impatience seeks to force things, 
and we flatter ourselves we have accomplished 
something when we have ostracized some form 
of wickedness. Not so. We cannot kill out 



140 THE OCTAVE OF BLESSING. 

the weeds of the garden by cutting off their 
tops, nor abolish slavery by war, nor prohibit 
intemperance by crusades, nor enforce Sabbath 
observance by law, nor destroy heresy by act 
of the church. What we have done is to put 
off the workings of wickedness or error for a 
time. But the day-long advantage comes to 
an end, and matters are worse than ^before. 
What was banished comes back to the gar- 
nished house with seven other devils, and the 
last end is worse than the first. 

My friends, we shall always make limping 
progress as long as we fight evil with weapons 
carnal instead of mighty. If we were but half 
as ready to bring about and keep the condition 
of peace our Lord commends, as we are to take 
part in exciting strife, there is reason and prom- 
ise to believe that long-time good would come. 
When you and I make many and personal 
visits to wrong-doers, pleading, reproaching in 
the spirit of courtesy and love, it will do more 
to bring men to righteousness than the fines 
and jails we insist on. But it is easier and 
more exciting to fight. It takes less bravery 



PEACE AND ITS BLESSINGS. I4I 

to cast a ballot or instruct an officer than to 
talk in person with the transgressor in kindness. 
We need more of the heroism of peace. Its 
victories may be slower, but they will be abid- 
ing, for they are wars on Christ's plan, accord- 
ing to the laws of God. But while men are 
busy with material successes, and women long 
for places in Luxury's lap, God 's kingdom can- 
not come; vice will know its opportunity and 
thrive, against whose inroads the only make- 
shift is to fight or die. How long, O Lord, 
how long shall thy people continue to put 
themselves under conditions whose recompense 
is woe! 

How long has the church quarreled over 
creed.? In less than three centuries after the 
death of the Prince of Peace his followers were 
killing one another because they could not be- 
lieve alike. And the last half decade has re- 
vealed evidences of even greater wrong, con- 
sidering present advantages. And, granting 
the formula made or defended to be absolutely 
true, what has been gained withal ? Dogma 
at expense of peace — salvation made plain by 



142 THE OCTAVE OF BLESSING. 

the placing of stumbling blocks — the affirma- 
tion of truth by denial of its power ! Is it not 
the world's maxim, " Let us do evil that good 
may come " ?• Is it not Christ's way to re- 
prove in love ? ' ' Let wheat and tares grow 
together," he said, ''for if you root up the 
one you destroy the other." What wonder 
the kingdom does not come at the noise of 
clash and babble ! 

The Father loves peace, and wants his 
children to have it. Jesus would encourage 
his brethren to help one another into a state 
that is so evidently a blessing in itself. ' ' For 
this," said he, " you shall be called the chil- 
dren of God." 

For what does strife-making do but divide 
interests and alienate hearts from what ought 
to be objects of their affection. How can 
there be the spirit of union which Christ en- 
joined, when bickerings and strifes keep the 
caldron of bitterness boiling ? It makes no 
difference whether the war be one of word or 
sword — the result is the same. Whatever else 
we may do we must know that by the strife 



PEACE AND ITS BLESSINGS. 1 43 

we cause or allow we have unsettled more of 
good than by other means we have established. 
Jesus asked nothing arbitrary when he prayed 
that his disciples might be one. He only asked 
that a condition might be maintained that 
would permit the simplest form of spiritual life 
and activity. The prayer shows the estimate 
he put on concord, and endorses the beatitude. 
The basis of peace-making and peace-keep- 
ing is charity. How can one injure the 
brother whom he loves and whom he com- 
mends to his heavenly Father ? But have not 
the children been exhorted in no uncertain 
terms to love one another ? This mark of dis- 
cipleship is the precursor of fruit-bearing uni- 
nimity and so of heirship from the Almighty. 
But as one suggests, ' ' The main practical diffi- 
culty with some at least of the peacemakers, 
is, how to carry themselves toward the undoers 
of peace, the disuniters of souls." And this 
after all is about the only difficulty, except with 
those who show themselves devil-born, in that 
they care less for peace than for feuds, out of 
which they extract such pleasures as only 



144 THE OCTAVE OF BLESSING. 

demons delight in. That upon which the be- 
atitude was pronounced was the calming of 
dissenting spirits, and such can come only 
through the fullest exercise of love. But * ' if 
ye love them which love you, what reward 
have ye } do not even the publicans the same .-*" 
What matter of congratulation is it that one is 
charitable toward those who are charitably in- 
clined, that he has patience with those who 
have lenient views, that he is tolerant of toler- 
ance, that he bows to those who have a bow 
for him ? In other words, what particular 
credit is it that one does not quarrel with those 
who do not quarrel with him ? 

•*Be ye therefore perfect," said Christ, 
* ' even as your Father which is in heaven is 
perfect." It is not enough to be as the world. 
The Father is to be the example to his chil- 
dren, the Father who maketh his sun to rise 
on the evil as well as on the good, on those 
who blaspheme him as well as on those who 
love him. It is not easy to be kindly disposed 
toward those who have no kindliness in their 
dispositions, not easy except to those who 



PEACE AND ITS BLESSINGS. 1 45 

have something of the all-mastering grace of 
love, and therein is both the virtue and the re- 
ward. Our merit is that our large love covers 
not only the good, but the bad; discrepance as 
well as sufficiency. It is not enough to have 
charity for the charitable; love for the loveless 
and unloving is the truthful test. By this we 
prove ourselves children of the Father; we be- 
long to the family of God. 

* ' My God ! with what surpassing love 
Thou lovest all our earth ! 
How good the least good is to thee ! 
How much each soul is worth ! 

*' How thou canst think so well of us, 
Yet be the God thou art. 
Is darkness to my intellect, 
But sunshine to my heart ! " 

From the consideration thus far given it is 
evident that the keeping of the peace in church 
and world is not only a duty enjoined, but that 
the doing of the duty brings its own blessed- 
ness. The moment one but fills his part he 
finds God's ever ready law of reward fulfilling 



146 THE OCTAVE OF BLESSING. 

the rest. It is matter of rejoicing that one is 
a child of God. For that means he has en- 
tered into new relationships that have new 
outcomes. Among other things this relation- 
ship means getting at one not only with God's 
self, but with the visible and invisible expres- 
sions of his self — physical, moral, spiritual. 
We have seen already how the keeping of these 
laws coincides with happiness, how unhappi- 
ness corresponds with discord in music. Peace 
is not only the condition but the cause of hap- 
piness. Strife consumes energy. There is no 
greater waster of forces than anger, hatred, 
jealousy, revenge, which both dissipate the at- 
tention and waste the time, and also tear down 
the physical tissue. Thus God has estab- 
lished the laws of reward and punishment 
which prescribe that the wrong doer shall suf- 
fer for his sins, while the righteous at once re- 
ceives a reward. So clearly is the duty of 
peace-making written in blood, and registered 
in the nerves. 

' ' Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in 
thy sight. " 



PEACE AND ITS BLESSINGS. 1 4/ 

When we get at the heart of it all we find 
God the good. If we believe that all things 
work together for good — that is for God — then 
we believe there is no real evil for those who 
love the good God. And ' ' the unity of his 
being receives and steadies our changeful lives, 
and we know with him the 

' Central peace subsisting in the heart 
Of endless agitation. ' " 

Then we need to foster the spirit of har- 
mony, because it not only brings happiness but 
promotes progress. Neither in store nor study, 
in thought nor action, prayer nor painting, can 
men improve on the past, on themselves, while 
each is anxious to tear away the pedestal on 
which another stands. They who run for the 
laurel wreath must not stop to wrestle; as they 
who run for the crown of better things cannot 
afford to waste time in contention. Science 
and inventions flourish ' ' when the war drum 
throbs no longer, " as do truth and charity 
when sect is not uppermost. Let socialism 
take notes. The world grows wiser and bet- 



148 THE OCTAVE OF BLESSING. 

ter as it fulfills Christ's requirement of peace, 
and the very wisdom and goodness is a part of 
the heritage of the children of God. 

But this is one of the things ' ' eye hath not 
seen. " For one of the subtlest qualities of 
evil is its power to absorb the good. It is not 
enough to say, ^ ' I have done wrong. " One 
must add, ' ' And that has kept me from the 
right. " Every sin is not only the presence of 
wrong done, but the absence of good that 
might have been done. When you admit 
strife you remit prosperity. In repressing an- 
other one suppresses himself. And this again 
is God's law, sin requiting itself. 

O, we learn so slowly that peace is good 
and the peace-maker blessed. 



THE EIGHTH BEATITUDE. 



PERSECUTION. 

Blessed are they which are persecuted for right- 
eousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 
Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and perse- 
cute you, and shall say all manner of evil against 
you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding 
glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so per- 
secuted they the prophets which were before you. — 
Matt. V. 10-12. 

This is the longest of all the beatitudes, and 
is the only one that is repeated. Thus early 
in his ministry Christ wishes to instill in his 
followers that bravery that he knew would after- 
ward be essential. Christians in those days as 
well as in these suffered from weak backs, and 
the Great Physician was doctoring to strength- 
en the spine. Just as a little later on he gave 
them the tonic of encouragement, saying, 
"Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father's 
good pleasure to give you the kingdom," so 
now he was giving what was calculated to 
build up a strong and noble following. 

Present-day persecutions differ widely from 



152 THE OCTAVE OF BLESSING. 

those in the time of Christ and the dark ages. 
As civihzation advances everything moves for- 
ward, vices as well as virtues, and why should 
not persecutions keep their place in the rank 
and file of things that are ? Of course we 
would not expect them to be dressed in the 
same garb that history paints for them, for 
that was very unbecoming, and persecution like 
everything else, has an eye to appearances. 
And besides the improved habiliment, there is 
an air of culture and refinement in this excres- 
cence of human conduct that only the nine- 
teenth century could impart. But there is not 
so much difference as there might be between 
then and now, and the Saviour's words, * ' They 
will also persecute you," are not lacking of ful- 
fillment even to-da}^ 

And we can scarcely wonder. Worldliness 
cannot bear the presence of good, much less 
its rebuke. The light of consistent Christian- 
ity, brought into the haunts of vice, produces 
much the same effect as when the doors of a 
dark, damp place are opened, and the fresh 
air and sunshine set the bugs and beetles go- 



PERSECUTION AND ITS REWARD. I 53 

ing. We know the result when one stirs up a 
hornet's nest, and unrighteous men, who have 
more stings than wings, proceed to use what 
they have. Christ said he came to bring 
peace, and he did — peace between man and 
God. But, as we have seen, he did not come 
to bring peace between righteousness and un- 
righteousness. Between them there is a great 
gulf fixed. Isaiah got himself into trouble by 
rebuking sin. So did Jeremiah and Micah. 
So did John the Baptist, and Peter, and Huss, 
and Luther So did Potamisena, and Mar- 
cella, and Perpetua, and Joan of Arc, and 
Anne Askew. So did Christ. It is almost 
impossible to live a strong life for good and 
God, without bringing down upon one's self 
the whole pack of the devil's wolves that are 
at that particular time harbored in the vicinity. 
If a man is at all like Christ he will continually 
run counter to evil, and when that evil is in- 
carnate then beware. According to the Bible 
popularity is no compliment. ' ' Woe unto 
you when all men speak well of you." One 
fault with the church and clergy of to-day is 



154 THE OCTAVE OF BLESSING. 

that there is too httle boldness. We pay 
more attention to ease and grace than to 
strength and power. One might easily under- 
stand the spirit of an old pastor who once said 
that he thought he could preach better if he 
had to go to jail for his principles about once a 
year. 

Good, unadulterated, cannot remain unmo- 
lested by evil. Between them there is no uni- 
son. Offenses must come; differences must 
arise; strife will ensue. Then come persecu- 
tions, and righteousness suffers at the hand of 
unrighteousness. Cain lives forever, and Abel 
dies at his hand again and again. 

It has been stated that present-day persecu- 
tions are not like those of history, and they are 
not. The state has handed their management 
over to society in general, where they have 
been so remodeled as that they are more acute 
now, and less unwieldy than in days gone by. 
Instead of mutilating the body, the much finer 
art of torturing the mind is resorted to. Racks 
and thumbscrews have given place to deadly 
books and the poison of polite conversation, 



PERSECUTION AND ITS REWARD. I 5 5 

the most refined instruments of persecution. 
There is no set place of inquisition now, for 
the man who works with you in the shop, or 
is associated with you on the board of trade, 
may suddenly turn on you with a sharp criti- 
cism, or fling some pointed bit of humor at 
you that will hurt for two or three days and 
perhaps rankle for as many months. And the 
more sincere you are in your efforts at right, 
the more likely you will be to feel it. It is not 
an uncommon thing now-a-days for a man's 
business to be ruined by the stand he takes on 
certain moral questions, and more than one 
man has been ostracized because he insisted 
on observing the Sabbath. The writer knows 
a gentleman who is continually torm.ented with 
drastic remarks about Christians and the 
Church; every one of which burns like lime 
cast into a fresh wound. And he knows 
another who is persecuted with low remarks 
and cutting flings whenever he passes a certain 
part of the city, and he would sooner walk up 
to the mouth of the lion's den than go there. 
That is the form that persecution takes on 



156 THE OCTAVE OF BLESSING. 

in these times. It is only an old foe with a 
new face. I would just as soon be responsible 
for using the flesh hooks on a human being, as 
for tearing his peace into shreds with criticisms 
or slanders. We must admit that much that 
is said is true; that in individuals and in the 
Church are errors that merit rebuke even from 
Satan himself. But the most that is said is 
not true, and the persecuted are they, against 
whom all manner of evil is spoken falsely for 
Christ's sake. 

It is upon these that Christ pronounces the 
blessing. He says the reward is so great that 
it warrants one in "rejoicing," and being " ex- 
ceeding glad, " even under the distress. And 
that is just like Jesus. He is always trying to 
show that things are not to be valued with the 
currency of the hour, nor measured with the 
yard-stick of this life. He would like to show 
us that God's discipline is a good deal like the 
discomfort one undergoes on the surgeon's 
table. He wants us to remember that while 
much pain is penalty, much also is corrective 
and preparatory. Whom he loveth he chasten- 



PERSECUTION AND ITS REWARD. I 5/ 

eth. He wants us to remember what we are 
being prepared for. We are apt to think only 
of the pain of the knife, but Jesus would have 
us forget the pain in what is to follow. So he 
says to all who suffer for his sake, ' ' Yours is 
the kingdom of heaven." It is his law of com- 
pensation, which he would placard everywhere, 
and have us know well and remember thorough- 
ly — " Great is your reward in heaven." 

We do well when we remember what a mas- 
ter worker God is, and how he finishes every- 
thing to a nicety; how he makes all things 
work together for good; how his wise and lov- 
ing purposes send their long filaments into 
seeming evils, and twine all about them, and 
fulfill themselves from them. It is a sublime 
trust Tennyson sings in these lines, saying, 

" That nothing walks with aimless feet; 
That not one life shall be destroyed. 
Or cast as rubbish to the void. 
When God hath made the pile complete. 

'' That not a worm is cloven in vain; 
That not a moth with vain desire 
Is shrivelled in a fruitless fire." 



158 THE OCTAVE OF BLESSING. 

The song comes from the Bible. For some 
reason or other there seems to be a postpone- 
ment of the enjoyment of good, as if perfect 
good were too much honor for this world. The 
place for true happiness is in the next world, 
and they who would try to change God's plan 
and find enjoyment now, simply change it, and 
suffer later on; they make no gain. Therefore 
Christ says: "Blessed are ye when men shall 
hate you, and when they shall separate you 
from their company, and shall reproach you, 
and cast out your narfte as evil, for the Son of 
man's sake. Rejoice ye in that day and leap 
for joy; for behold your reward is great in 
heaven: for in the like manner did their fathers 
unto the prophets. But woe unto you that are 
rich ! for ye have received your consolation. 
Woe unto you that are full ! for ye shall hun- 
ger. Woe unto you that laugh now ! for ye 
shall -mourn and weep. Woe unto you when 
all men shall speak well of you ! for so did 
their fathers to the false prophets." 

And it is not simply in the case of those who 
suffer for the Son of man's sake, that attention 



PERSECUTION AND ITS REWARD. I 59 

is called to the fact that something better 
awaits them. The world's enmity and scorn 
reveals the wide difference between the Chris- 
tian and itself, which is always a compliment 
to the Christian. And besides that, it is rated 
as a special honor to be counted worthy to en- 
dure hardship for Christ's sake. So that when 
next you give the gospel invitation to the hard- 
ened, and are greeted with the loud laugh or 
petty sneer, count it all joy. Be exceeding 
glad. Great is your reward. You are com- 
pared with the prophets. You enter into fel- 
lowship with Isaiah and Paul. The kingdom 
of heaven is yours. 

But the question arises. What is the virtue 
in doing well for reward.-^ People tell us if we 
seek return for our good, it is merely a barter- 
ing of commodities in a spiritual way. If we 
are offered for our course of trouble a compen- 
sation more than complete, and deliberately 
choose the one that we may gain the other, 
then we are on a par with the beggar who 
puts on rags and disfigures his face that he 
may win sympathy and alms; or with the 



l6o THE OCTAVE OF BLESSING. 

clown who simply makes a fool of himself 
for a liberal salary. At least that is the way 
it is put, and the way some are likely to act, if 
they are not thoughtful and wise. 

We must learn to distinguish between a re- 
ward that adds to moral worth, and one that 
simply adds to personal gratification. The 
one adds to capacity, while the other tends to 
exhaust it. Personal gratification smacks of 
the purely selfish. But whatever adds to mo- 
ral worth goes to make up a complete spirit- 
ual being, a blessing in itself. Whether or 
not it is right to have regard to reward depends 
on the nature of the reward. Now, the sub- 
stance of reward, as the New Testament shows 
it, is the gaining of that personal righteousness, 
that to the seeker after righteousness is a re- 
ward in itself. Who does not care for right- 
eousness will not care for its reward, for its 
reward is itself. It calls men to it, and con- 
fers itself as the greatest blessing it could be- 
stow. At least we may so understand Paul, 
who says that he ' ' presses toward the mark 
for the prize of the high calling of God in 



PERSECUTION AND ITS REWARD. l6l 

Christ Jesus." That was a calHng into perfect 
being, not simply into enjoyment of what 
pleases. He would be satisfied and perfectly 
happy when he had arrived at that high call- 
ing, at the simple being of what God would 
have him be. And that was the end toward 
which this ideal Christian and inspired writer 
worked. Later on he tells us that this same 
Jesus ^ ' endured the cross, despising the shame, " 
and all '' for the joy that was set before him." 
But can we think of Christ as entering into a 
joy of personal gratification ? Can we attri- 
bute to him a sense of pleasure in a mere re- 
ceptive enjoyment ? What the disciple meant 
is seen in the words of the Master, ' * My meat 
is to do the will of him that sent me." To 
fulfill all righteousness, to be about the 
Father's business and accomplish his will, that 
was the one joy of the whole earthly career of 
our Lord. This was the reward that was set 
before him, for which he lived, and endured, 
and died. What higher spirit of righteousness 
can we conceive ? 

Too often people mistake the joy of heaven 



1 62 THE OCTAVE OF BLESSING. 

to be the gratification of desire, either of lower 
or higher degree; but we are warranted in be- 
Heving it to be in an enlarged spiritual nature. 
When we understand that, then we under- 
stand the meaning of the words, ''The king- 
dom of heaven is within." The reward of 
righteousness is thus found to be righteousness 
itself, of which no man can say, ' ' We have 
not the right of respect to its recompense." A 
heaven of mere delight would be near relative 
to the Mohammedan's sensual paradise. But 
a heaven whose fruition grows out of a nature 
that is itself what it seeks to enjoy, remains 
forever the admiration of the keenest intellect 
and the devoutest soul. There can be no 
question in seeking such reward. 



LAWS OF SOUL GROWTH 



t:"p-ii^e^e: sEM^iMorsrs 



SHOWING THE COMMON RECOGNITION OF 

CERTAIN LAWS, AND POINTING OUT 

THE ADVANTAGES OP A MORE 

EXTENDED AND INTELLIGENT 

APPLICATION OP THEM. 



THE LAW OF ACCUMULATION. 



THE LAW OF ACCUMULATION. 



Unto every one which hath shall be given. — Luke 
xix. 26. 



In one form or another I have long consid- 
ered this subject, which to me has been fruit- 
ful of much thought. It has occurred to me 
that all gain comes by process of law, general- 
ly speaking; and that the law of increase is 
what in the physical sciences we call momen- 
tum. There is not only solar and terrestrial 
gravitation but there is a personal and divine 
gravitation as well. The earth has a power 
by which it attracts; but so have I. Every- 
thing I get, increases my power to get more. 
Everything I lose, increases the probability 
that I will lose more. My neighbor has the 
same quality. He has acquired more than I, 
therefore he gets more. He has more force 
with which to draw it. The law which gov- 
erns his acquisitions will not be unlike that 



1 68 LAWS OF SOUL GROWTH. 

which determines the distance covered by fall- 
ing bodies — the square of the seconds multi- 
plied by 1 6. 1. Get one thing, and you get 
what goes with it. * ' Unto him that hath 
shall be given." 

This is the law which governs influence. It 
depends on friendship in the large sense of the 
word. The larger the following, the greater the 
sphere. Every one brings one. With every 
man for friend, all power is yours. Whoever 
capitulates in life's friendly wars, becomes an 
instrument of advantage; but he comes not 
alone. Burgoyne's surrender meant the sur- 
render of six thousand. Their power became 
Washington's. We win men together with the 
retinue that follows. Give us Jupiter, and we 
have his satellites. When you have persuaded 
your neighbor to your belief, it naturally fol- 
lows that he exercises an influence (not neces- 
sarily conscious) upon those who would be in- 
fluenced by him in some other view. 

That is, to him that hath influence, the very 
nature of things will bring him more. Repu- 
tation depends on it. Speak a good word for 



THE LAW OF ACCUMULATION. 1 69 

thy fellow, and some other, who is anxious to 
carry news, and too lazy to challenge the 
hearing, will repeat it twice. Those who hear 
it will receive the next good report the easier. 
Because he has their good will, how much 
easier to make an impression of good ! Say 
what you will, we are ready to receive good 
news of a good man. We have expected it. 
Everything is in his favor. * * Just like 
him," we exclaim. A bad report shocks, 
and though we may repeat it, we re- 
fuse to believe it. The reason is, he has our 
confidence, and we extend it to him further. 
But once let it be ascertained that the evil is 
true, and' we are willing to believe anything. 
It is because he has no standing with us, and 
even the credit of the good he may have done 
is taken from him. So true it is that ' ' unto 
every one which hath shall be given ; and from 
him that hath not even that he hath shall be 
taken away from him." 

This is one great secret of riches. Get your 
start, and away you go. All kinds of credits 
are at the disposal of the wealthy. The more 



I/O LAWS OF SOUL GROWTH. 

your wealth the greater your opportunities. 
"No great returns without great investments," 
is an understood principle with board of trade 
and standard oil commissioners. We talk of 
the fabulous wealth of the few. But it comes 
by law, even if it is not by moral law. The 
poor man gets nothing because he has nothing 
to get with. Many a man might row out into 
the current if some one would push him from 
the shore. But ' ' from him that hath not 
shall be taken even that which he hath," and 
the rich man appropriates the oars. The poor 
man is poor man still. 

So it is in gaining knowledge. The most 
obscure bit of information that ever thrust 
itself upon the mind will call in a companion 
piece at some time. Science is only the best 
way of getting at things. Every fact ascer- 
tained with its cause opens the way for a 
score. One phenomenon accounted for re- 
veals the law that leads to the discovery of all 
co-ordinate phenomena. All the universe is a 
system, and knowledge comes by mastering 
the major parts. What is not known comes 



THE LAW OF ACCUMULATION. I /I 

when the known is appHed. Facts grow on 
long stems, and are best gathered as the 
flowers of the arbutus — first get the trail, 
which is the general cause, and you master all 
results. 

But what I am trying to say is seen no 
clearer anywhere than in the course of success. 
How^ever we may account for the process by 
w^hich w^e are led to give credit to others, we 
cannot mistake the fact that reputation has a 
great deal to do with criticism. Establish 
yourself in the minds of the people and all is 
yours. Few dare -contradict the great. To 
speak against the public mind is deemed pre- 
sumption. Look at a celebrated painting, and 
the mere fact that it has been long and well 
received bespeaks favor for it. When some 
celebrated prima donna makes a tour every city 
vies with the last in praising her, and every 
plaudit is a new power guaranteeing more. 
Some inglorious, unknov/n songster writes on 
Spring and is laughed at. Tennyson writes 
twenty lines on the same subject, and receives 
five thousand dollars for his v/ork. It is 



1/2 LAWS OF SOUL GROWTH. - 

because he hath that more is given him. You 
have wondered why people laugh at the funny 
man, even when he does nothing that is comic- 
al. It is tribute paid his reputation. A 
celebrated orator is to speak at the auditorium, 
and his name assures a marked attention. The 
very presence of the vast company, and the 
inspiration of their wrapt silence, lifts him into 
power he could not feel but for that. Yet he 
owes the night's success to occasions of the 
past, and it, in turn, contributes to the future. 
This is the great law of accumulation, and 
reads, The more you have, the more you get. 
Gain always increases power. Make sure 
start, and away you go. Who has most, gets 
most. Accumulation is its own argument. 
All things gravitate to the great. Both good 
and bad gather as they go. ' ' Unto him that 
hath shall be given," and all men's Master 
hath spoken a law of the universe. 

As we look away from the thousand verifi- 
cations of the principle described, these ob- 
servations advantage us in the law when spir- 
itually applied, for it was spoken of spiritual 



THE LAW OF ACCUMULATION. 1/3 

things. It means here exactly what it means 
in every-day hfe, where we feel it with such 
force. Every new power of spirit begets 
another. The one who has ten talents, not 
only gets five more, as his fellow, but ten; and 
not only that but the eleventh. There is no 
greater stimulus to moral and Christian effort 
than the recognition oft his law of accumula- 
tion. One victory does not mean one, but 
two. One step upward does not take you so 
far, and leave you there, but is an impetus to 
a second. If it were not for this it would be 
well-nigh impossible to make progress. Right 
would be only a treadmill, we going step by 
step, but never moving. The old hymn we 
used to sing so much, ' ' Yield not to tempta- 
tion," had a subtle line in it: "Each victory 
will help you some other to win." Suppose it 
did not: who would be better in a hundred 
years .'' Progress would be impossible. Every 
day would be like yesterday, and next year find 
us no further than to-day. It is because it is 
true that to him who attains some power in 
spiritual things, more power shall be given, 



1/4 LAWS OF SOUL GROWTH. 

that we may manage to get along. 

The growth in grace we talk of is based on 
this. All the goodness we attain to is like a 
step we put under our feet to lift us to more. 
Take this away, and you and I must sit down 
to a life without even a hope of progress. 
Moralist and Christian have every reason to 
thank God for the fact that ' ' to him that hath 
shall be given." 

Would you be right ? Then put yourself in 
the way of right. It is the principle of the 
toboggan slide — physical, moral or spiritual — 
and is tersely put, the farther the faster. Take 
the initiative in good, and believe in its power. 

That is the first step in habit. Get your 
neighbor who hasn't been in church in ten 
years, to come once, and his mind naturally 
turns that way next week. What we do once, 
all things favorable, we are likely to do again. 
The m.ind runs in grooves, and thoughts and 
impressions repeat themselves again and again. 
We associate ideas, and consequently some- 
thing is always suggesting something else. 
When the Esquimau travels from the inland 



THE LAW OF ACCUMULATION. 1/5 

to the sea, it reminds him of the home of the 
whale, and that of his own northern home, 
filled with the odor of blubber. So every- 
where. Every one has a controlling thought. 
With the Esquimau away from home, it is the 
delights of snow and ice; with one it is love of 
the beautiful; with another, power; with an- 
other, social pleasure; with another, lust; with 
another, gain, or self-esteem, or sacrifice, or 
heaven, or travel, or language, or art, or 
science, or news-bearing, or what not. Every- 
thing we see is referred to the controlling life- 
thought. Good and bad are assimilated. 
Every one is a Midas, having the power of 
changing everything he touches to the ruling 
passion. Therefore, he who once does, has 
taken an initiative step, which by repetition 
becomes habit, and habit a controlling power. 
Change of taste comes slowly, but once change 
it, and you may feed it from a thousand 
sources. Then many a good that others seek 
in vain, will give itself to you. It is because 
you have, that to you is given. From your 
neighbor who has not, even the slight inclina- 



176 LAWS OF SOUL GROWTH. 

tion he has is taken away. There is nothing 
to keep it ahve; it dies. 

We all need the enthusiasm of encourage- 
ment. Give us to see we have done some- 
thing, and we can do more. Let me know I 
have made some achievement in Christian life, 
and I will center thought and effort for another, 
and will probably win. Let me feel that I 
have made one failure, and the cold chills come 
over me and freeze another effort. One evil 
overcome brings the tingle of satisfaction and 
victory, which flushes with the hope of a 
further triumph. One difficulty in Christian 
life surmounted makes me think — I can over- 
come another. There is nothing which lends 
to success like enthusiasm, and enthusiasm 
must have something to start from. There- 
fore, it is every one's duty to encourage every 
one else. Has your friend done something ? 
It is not necessary to flatter, but let him know 
that you know it, and put it under his feet to 
step to something else on. Here is the great 
difference between adulation and commenda- 
tion; one holds your good deeds up before your 



THE LAW OF ACCUMULATION. I// 

eyes, the other lays them under your feet to climb 
on Tell me I have done so and so very clev- 
erly, and the action is fulsome. Tell me there 
is something to be done, and that I can do it 
because I have done the other, and you serve 
the cause and myself. Many a man fails be- 
cause he knows not what he has. Let him 
know that he hath, and * ' unto every one 
which hath shall be given." 

When one comes to me with the complaint 
that he gets little good from this, that or the 
other good thing — good books, sermons, reviv- 
als, or what not— I say to myself. It is be- 
cause he hath not. Unto him who hath by 
effort found the fortune that lies wrapped in 
culture, there shall be given the power to 
grasp, and do, and delight in a hundred things 
that offer themselves to none else. We need 
to know the necessity of preliminaries, and 
preparations and introductions; .to know that 
there must be a before to precede an after, 
and that v/hat we are, contributes to what we 
would be. God's help is not always by in- 
spiration, but often through mechanical means. 



1/8 LAWS OF SOUL GROWTH. 

You shrug your shoulders at the idea of becom- 
ing righteous by machinery; but that is all it 
amounts to, that is what the text teaches. 
This God's law is a fly-wheel, which once put 
in motion, helps us through many a strain that 
would stop us but for that momentous force. 
Pray one prayer of faith, and the next will be 
marked by a greater faith, which, when an- 
swered, will stimulate to a still greater. Touch 
one new God's truth, and the thrill will lead to 
another. One peep into the glories of God's 
wise government, and you will come again, and 
again, and again. Every trial borne by the 
strength of divine power, will infuse a new 
courage that shall bear ten. Like the body 
gravitating to the earth, we fall toward heaven 
the faster by the very force of the movement. 

Go on, therefore, Christian, till the flush of 
success shall mantle thy cheek with the crim- 
son, and thine eye shall flash with the knowl- 
edge of power. God's law in Christian ser- 
vice is that power is cumulative. We gather 
as we go. 

It is because of this subtle law that we have 



THE LAW OF ACCUMULATION. 1 79 

need, on the other hand, to guard ourselves 
from evil. Everything I have said concerning 
the accumulation of good, applies equally to evil. 
If good indulged increases good, evil indulged 
increases evil. Everything comes easier a sec- 
ond time. Boats that go over Niagara Falls 
move but slowly when they start. The course 
of evil increases in a regular arithmetical pro- 
gression. From him that makes no progress 
in good,, shall be taken away the power that 
hath been given him. Therefore how neces- 
sary to use our all ! 

And there is also a place here for a word 
concerning impulse: I speak of impulse to bet- 
ter things. How often these are slighted and 
disregarded. Such promptings come from the 
Spirit, the third person of the Holy Trinity. 
Sometimes people wonder why this one or that 
one has drifted away, when it seemed he was 
making sure progress. There is no secret 
about it. It came about by the law of heaven 
and earth that decrees that men must use 
what they have or part from it. He has made 
no use of promptings. Every inclination has 



l80 LAWS OF SOUL GROWTH. 

been laughed or frowned down. The talent 
has been laid in a napkin. Once let an im- 
pulsive, imperative thought arise, and he 
throws it off in a round of excitement. The 
little goes under the napkin. Did you think 
he would come out all right, and make a shin- 
ing light in the circle of every reform ? And 
were you disappointed ? Then you did not 
know he had taken pains to get rid of his good 
thought. Yes, he hid it under a napkin, and 
the impulse was taken away. This is why it 
was written — Quench not the Spirit; for he 
who courts that One vv^ill receive his prompt- 
ings; but he who stops his ear to duty's call, 
even the inclination to good will be taken from 
him. A thousand pities- on his poor benighted 
soul ! 

No passage in the whole Word is more sug- 
gestive, or opens a wider field for thought, 
fruitful at once of encouragements and warn- 
ings. It breathes at the same moment a bless- 
ing and a curse. Use that thou hast and that 
will bring the more. Remember the maxim, 
The more we have, the more we get. God's 
law in earth, and sea, and sky is — 

* ' Unto every one which hath shall be 

GIVEN." 



GAIN FROM LOSS, 



GAIN FROM LOSS. 

There is that scattereth, and yet increaseth; and 
there is that withholdeth more than in meet, but it 
tendeth to poverty. — Prov. xi. 24. 

I write upon this subject because the truth 
of it has been forced upon me so many times. 
It is something we see verified every day. 
Each day's two suns bound plentiful illustra- 
tions. 

There is a great deal of what we call good 
fortune in life. People of poverty come to 
affluence, and the ignorant come to learning. 
Among the thoughtless it passes for luck; but 
the wise call it law. They say it is based on 
the principle that gain always comes from loss: 
that what you have shows how much you 
have parted with. 

Nature outran revelation to be our first 
teacher in this. We ought to be educated in 
so much, even if we had no Bible. It was no 



184 LAWS OF SOUL GROWTH. 

new truth which Christ proposed when he gave 
theparahel to the text, saying that "except a 
grain of wheat fall into the ground and die, it 
abideth alone." It was a republication of a 
natural law. Life comes at the cost of life; 
the -corn reproduces itself in its death: we 
know no other way. Show me a living, grow- 
ing stalk, and I will dig up the root and find a 
decayed grain. Bring me a success in full 
bloom, and I will dig in the soil of the past 
and find some dead hope or energy. 

The farmer says, ' ' I will . sow abundantl}^ 
that I may reap abundantly; for if I sow spar- 
ingly, I shall reap also sparingly." The farmier 
is wise; and the law of the field is the law 
of life. We reap as we sow. But ever and 
anon we hear the piteous v/ail of some disap- 
pointed seeker, who has failed to sow, yet ex- 
pects a harvest. And the counter tells the 
same tale as the plow. The commercial prin- 
ciple is, outlay before income. If one would 
sell at a profit, he must buy at a cost. Invest- 
ment first, dividend afterward. People often 
wonder why others succeed so well, when they 



GAIN FROM LOSS. 1 85 

expend so much. It is no marvel at all. He 
who would gather must scatter. 

"I can't afford to dress decently well," says 
the slouch; but his equal knows that "the ap- 
parel oft proclaims the man," and acts accord- 
ingly. Yet the first will wonder at the good 
fortune which attends the other. "Ha," ex- 
claims the poor man, " I'll increase the family 
income by taking my boy out of school and 
making him work." But when the boy grows 
to a stunted manhood he cannot earn enough 
to keep even himiself, and the aged father is in 
want. A common sight is a town that will 
not part with the revenue it receives on liq- 
uors. Another is wiser, and parts with reve- 
nue, tax and trouble. Improvements are too 
expensive, some think; but progress declares 
that nothing is too expensive, if it wins in the 
long run. Business men could lessen expenses 
sometimes, but they mean business, and know 
it is poor policy to be niggardly. 

This is only a nosegay of illustrations, plucked 
at random from the broad field of life. No 
reason to question the statement, "There is 



1 86 LAWS OF SOUL GROWTH. 

that withholdeth more than is meet, but it 
tendeth to poverty." Plainly put in present- 
day parlance it means, Hold tight to all you 
get, and failure will hold tight to you. Nature 
is an exact steward and dispenses all things at 
set values. Success never smiles on the stingy. 
Sacrifice is the forerunner of happiness. 
"Nothing venture, nothing have," is the prin- 
ciple in modern proverb. It is a worldly and 
a wise one, and because so many have acted 
on it, One has said that "the children of this 
world are in their generation wiser than the 
children of light." 

And the law holds good in transactions with 
God. One must part with present gain for 
after bliss. You cannot expect to hold to 
everything in this life and v\^in in the world to 
come. It is not in keeping with anything to 
expect something for nothing. In many senses 
we may say there is no such thing as a gift. 
Everything is purchased. If one would have 
he must pay. Give and get. Make invest- 
ment in things above, forego the baneful, and 
you will receive in return compound interest 



GAIN FROM LOSS, 1 87 

for every confidence imposed in God. One 
may lose home, friends, property, influence, 
life itself, for Christ's sake and the gospel's, 
but in the world to come have eternal life. 
Aye, it is a principle deep in the nature of 
things, which says, ' ' There is that scattereth 
and yet increaseth; and there is that withholdeth 
more than is meet, but it tendeth to poverty." 
Greed is a sin and brings its own punish- 
ment. There are more misers than those in 
monetary affairs, though it is not as evident 
sometimes. I should say that a man who de- 
manded services from all others, and yet with- 
held his own power to serve, w^as as miserly, 
as though he had hoarded his dollars. So is a 
man miserly who withholds from himself. 
Many have dwarfed their own happiness or 
usefulness by meager preparation. It is poor 
policy to retrench on the means to success. 
Carpenters and lawyers must have tools or 
they cannot work. No profession can afford 
to stint in material; and neither can a Christian 
deny himself the means of spiritual life. Even 
his worldly interests vAll pay him better for the 



155 LAWS OF SOUL GROWTH. 

time spent in spiritual engagements. A busy 
man will find time for his devotions, and the 
more he prays the better he succeeds. "To 
pray well is to have studied well, " was Luther's 
motto. " Since I began to ask God's blessing 
on my studies," wrote Dr. Payson, " I have 
done more in one week than I have done in a 
whole year before." Many a poor, half-hearted 
Christian bewails the fact that he is no better 
than he is, while the cause lies in himself. He 
has denied himself too little, has taken too lit- 
tle pains to secure a blessing, and what won- 
der that he fails. He is too busy, but he must 
learn to " take time to make time." He may 
save for a while, but he will find in the long 
run that ' ' there is that scattereth and yet in- 
creaseth; and there is that withholdeth more 
than is meet, but it tendeth to poverty." 

But people are often blind to the fact that 
continual outgo wears larger room for contin- 
ual inflow. What we call selfishness is only 
shortsightedness. We ought to see our own 
good, but cannot always do it. When we in- 
dulge the immediate want, it may be at the 



GAIN FROM LOSS. 159 

expense of some greater or more distant one. 
A mother takes it that the care of noisy chil- 
dren is a burden. But a farther-sighted 
mother knows that the care of wayward youth 
is a greater burden. The one withholds her 
present effort, and the other scatters freely of 
her care and watchfulness. But the one shall 
come to the poverty of an age of regret, and 
the other shall enjoy the returns of her sacri- 
fice. You may generally set it down that self- 
ishness is shortsightedness. God has so ar- 
ranged the plan of life that we get returns 
slowly. We are plainly told that bread cast 
upon the waters is to be found after many days. 
I know a man who took out a paid-up policy of 
twenty years in one of our eastern insurance 
companies some time ago. Patiently he is 
scattering his money through these years, that 
by and by he may reap a harvest of gain. 
Now he receives no return; it is all outlay for 
twenty years; and then he will receive his own 
with usury. The plan of God's insurance is 
not unlike this. The longer we trust invest- 
ments with him, the heavier the return they 



1 90 LAWS OF SOUL GROWTH. 

bring. It is to our interest to look so far 
ahead at reward, and yet that is God's way of 
teaching men confidence in him. Hope that is 
seen is not hope. Reward that comes imme- 
diately is no stimulus to trust. Too many 
want to deal with the Almighty as though he 
were a thief, wanting only the chance to beat 
them out of their own. God requires perfect 
confidence, and the requirement is so stringent 
that he has taken the pains to write it indellibly 
all over the face of nature, and -to inscribe it in 
revelation. When men come to learn that the 
lesson of the Bible is only the lesson they have 
been slowly learning from life,' they will, per- 
haps, have more respect for it, since it comes 
with a double authority. And obedience to 
this law is to our own advantage. That is, 
there are two ways of living — one which de- 
mands of others and refuses to 'give, and one 
which gives and waits patiently for return. The 
former is called selfishness, but the latter is 
known as wisdom. And yet the difference be- 
tween them is only a time question. One waits, 
and the other will not, though it be to his ad- 



GAIN FROM LOSS. 19I 

vantage. So it is found true that what is God's 
requirement is our best interest, and our inter- 
ests and God's will meet and blend. 

A common deception practiced upon us by 
the Evil Influence within, is that God's ways 
are so hard, and that Christianity is all sacri- 
fice. But the truth is it is like the the beef- 
steak you bought for your breakfast, like the 
ball you paid to attend, like the education you 
struggled for as a means of livelihood, like 
the great pains the author takes in the pro- 
duction of his book, or the dramatist of his 
play, or the musician of his opera, or the 
artist of his picture. It is all loss before 
gain, outlay before income, scattering before 
increasing. Man is a kind of Shylock, de- 
manding what his nature prompts him to. 
Nature and God are righteous judges, grant- 
ing what we have paid for. There is an ex- 
act equivalent for every bond, and justice sees 
we get no less, no more. This is the eternal 
order in all things, working wherever exist- 
ence is. Every particle of matter in motion 
displaces another. No power is lost, neither 



192 LAWS OF SOUL GROWTH. 

can there be power except at the expense of 
power. For every gain there is a cost, for 
every hfe a death. None reap who have not 
sown. *' Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, 
and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened 
unto you." Empty yourself and be filled; for 
nature permits no vacuum. Pay the required 
price and nothing shall be withheld. He who 
craves the pearls of honor, happiness or peace 
in the field of life, must go, sell all that he 
hath, and buy. The world is a great board of 
exchange. Everything comes at a price, good 
or bad. Napoleon won renown at the price of 
mercy; and Judas got his thirty pieces of silver, 
for which he paid the last spark of his man- 
hood. Luther and Lincoln won glory and 
peace of conscience, but at the price of anguish 
and sleepless nights. And the immortal Wash- 
ington stands first in the hearts of his country- 
men because no trial was too hard, no sacrifice 
too great, for the love he bore to country, home 
and freedom. 

Everyone must be Vv^isely free with what he 
has of time, of talent, of energy. Sooner or 



GAIN FROM LOSS. 1 93 

later the return will come for every sacrifice of 
whatever resource. If it does not come 
now, it will come later; if not in this world, 
then in the next. If we realized this more, we 
would spend more time in prayer, put more 
effort into work, use our incomes more freely. 
In a word, we hold tight to what we have, not 
thinking that he that giveth — not money only, 
but whatever it may be — but lendeth to the 
Lord. God is not a hard master, asking ser- 
vice which he does not and will not requite, 
but a gentle master who will not receive what 
he will not pay for a thousand fold. So many 
people imagine hard things of religion and 
its author; when if they would only examine, 
it would be found that we are living without a 
question under the same requirements of the 
world about us. We give, we wait, we get 
return; we plan for long lengths of time, we 
patiently hope, we enter into enjoyment. 
Here and there on every hand men are prodi- 
gal with their resources, and are gaining for 
what they have wisely given up. Yet when it 
comes to religion it seems a hard thing to sacri- 



194 LAWS OF SOUL GROWTH. 

fice in. It is because there is not a due appre- 
ciation of the returns it brings. Men are all 
too anxious to cling to what they have, to enjoy 
all they can of the world, and withhold from 
God the service due. It is a wise maxim, ap- 
plicable not only to things of this world but to 
things of the next, which tells us that ' ' there is 
that scattereth and yet increaseth; and there is 
that withholdeth more than is meet, but it 
tendeth to poverty. " 

The Christian needs to learn trust and pa- 
tience. Give God his time and no one will be 
the loser. Out of chaos he called the earth 
and heavens; and out of privations he unfolds 
a never-ending supply for chaste lovers of him- 
self and his righteousness. 

When Mrs. Browning, whom England calls 
Shakespeare's daughter, speaks, we listen. 

'' O, the little birds sang east, the little birds 
sang west ! 
And I said in underbreath. 
All our life is mixed with death, 
And who knows which is best .? 



GAIN FROM LOSS. 1 95 

' ' O, the little birds sang east, the little birds 
sang west! 
And I smiled to think God's goodness 
Flows around our incompleteness; 
Round our restlessness his rest." 

Whomsoever God calls to an inheritance of 
tumults, he calls to the inheritance incorrupti- 
ble and undefiled. If you lay down the dear 
and the sweet in this life, he will give it back 
in the witness of the stars. God's two pre- 
sentations are cross and crown, and they who 
bear shall wear. 



LAWS OF INFLUENCE. " 



LAWS OF INFLUENCE. 



They broug"ht forth the sick into the streets, and 
laid them on beds and couches, that at the least, the 
shadow of Peter passing" by might overshadow some 
of them. — Acts v. 15. 



Every life casts a shadow. We leave an 
outline of character wherever we go. None 
of us lives to himself, and influence reaches be- 
yond our own length. Impressions may be 
slight or lasting, but they are true. We stand 
up one beside the other, and our shadows fall 
full length upon each. When one character 
puts its silhouette on another we call it by no 
sensuous name, but speak of influence. And 
yet influence is only the casting of spiritual 
shadows, if such a figure might be permitted. 

And we mistake greatly when we say that 
influence is the mere power to move opinion. 
It is that, but it is more. It is the power to 
leave impression on the feelings, as well as on 
the intellect and will. I may speak with you 



200 LAWS OF SOUL GROWTH. 

and not touch your conviction, but will make 
some kind of impress-ion on your feelings. The 
point I seek to gain may not be attained. But 
something else has been achieved. When we 
meet to convince one another, the particular 
conviction miay be wanting, yet some convic- 
tion will not fail. We cannot measure influ- 
ence by mental achievement only, but by emiO- 
tional consequence as well. Therefore the 
man who denies his influence is only half right. 
We all cast shadows; that is, we all leav^ 
impressions. You cannot came into contact 
vvith m.e unless I feel it. Every one has an 
atmosphere he carries with him, and people 
feel its balm or chill at his approach. Did 
you ever meet one who left you feeling exactly 
as 3'OU felt before you saw him ? Feelings are 
very sensitive, and every time spirit touches 
spirit there are two impressions. Rather we 
may say that souls have a peculiar imparting 
power, and every time they meet they infuse 
themselves one into the other. When you and 
I come in contact, we each give a portion of 
ourselves to the other, and when we separate 



LAWS OF INFLUENCE. 201 

we are not the same persons who met. The 
part you gave me of yourself I have taken and 
blended with my own nature. Perceptibly or 
imperceptibly the tinge of my character is 
changed. So with you. We are mutual char- 
acter makers. 

Each of us now bears the impress of a 
thousand souls. We cannot show ourselves 
without showing our modifications When 
one speaks it is not the original self, but a 
compound. When he utters a sentiment it 
is not the pure product of his individuality, 
but a modification of Virgil, Milton, Haw- 
thorne, parents, brothers, sisters, teachers, 
friends, and enemies who have left their im- 
press on his thought. Even the poor beggar 
at the door, who received of your charity, 
made your sympathies a little larger when 3^ou 
heard his tale of woe. And the boorish de- 
bater in the railway car gave you a still greater 
dislike for uneducated enthusiasm. All these 
leave their mark. ' ' None of us liveth to him- 
self. " There is power in soul friction. Peo- 
ple will meet and shadows will fall. 



202 LAWS OF SOUL GROWTH. 

Again we may observe, that influence 
for its own sake is not always attain- 
able. Will power does not bring every- 
thing, and there are things in life that 
evade us when we pursue them. Often that 
which is most valuable comes when we are 
seeking something else. People set out in 
pursuit of pleasure, but it does not lie in the 
bright fields and upon the smooth traveled 
roads, waiting to be taken. Like honor, it 
recoils from easy, wanton touch, but gives 
itself to the weary toiler, passing its secluded, 
darkened cell. Honors, happiness and influ- 
ence are coy, and refuse to be taken, but are 
easily found and snared by those who seek the 
good. Who seeks for power over men will 
never attain it. Let one seek first that inward 
probity that beams in every look and tone, and 
what he asks will discover itself. Influence is 
not a visible power, but an aroma, perfuming^ 
the atmosphere of thought and life. What 
one is will determine what he gives forth. 
What you make of others will depend on what 
you have made of yourself. Napoleon's men 



LAWS OF INFLUENCE. 203 

fell at his feet because he ruled himself better 
than they could rule themselves. 

Get inspiration. Our lives are too earthly. 
They smell of potatoes and bacon. The 
strength that bends mind feeds on ambrosia. 
The Shakespearean fire that kindles the glow 
in your thoughts was lighted by Prometheus. 
So was that of Garibaldi. So was that of 
Carlyle. The divine enthusiasm that rages in 
one soul sets fire to another. But how can a 
stone put the prairies in a blaze .'' If I would 
inspire others, I myself must feel the divine 
glow. If I would lay truth heavily upon 
my neighbor, it must first crush me to earth. 
When we get the divine conviction of enthusi- 
asm, and lay our hands on others, then our 
words will touch and burn. First fill thyself, 
then thrill thy neighbor. 

The power within makes the power without. 
It was because in Christ dwelt all the fullness 
of the God-head bodily, that men reverenced 
him when he spoke. The soul of simplicity 
and love that filled the life to overflowing drew 
the multitudes after him. Sublime were the 



204 LAWS OF SOUL GROWTH. 

words that fell on the ears of shepherds and 
fishermen like the benediction of a new world; 
but sublimer far was the divine essence from 
which they came. Truer and tenderer than his 
deeds of mercy was the great swelling soul 
within, from which ever broke the new mar- 
vels of his matchless life. And when he 
walked with men, they felt the greatness that 
they could not see, and were drawn by the 
magic power. Would you wield some power 
with others.-^ Then forget the end 3^ou seek; 
be first greater than thy fellow, and by the 
universal law of gravitation, the greater will 
attract the less. Only thus may we have 
abiding power with men. 

So much for shadow casting considered sub- 
jectively. But we constantly fall under the shad- 
ow ol others. Half we do is under an unconscious 
influence. Call to mind the time you were 
thrown in company with that vivacious person 
who called forth your latent energy. He was 
not a so-called man of influence; he did not 
endeavor to change your opinion or to give you 
new notions; he had his own notions — • 



LAWS OF INFLUENCE. 205 

not striking, nor original, nor forcibly 
expressed — yet you found yourself drawn out, 
and you expressed yourself as you had not 
done before. And when you came to look 
back on that time, you found it had been the 
birth hour of some conviction. And you re- 
member also how your thoughts have been 
dried and your tongue bound, in the company 
of some other whose soul was not in sympa- 
thy with yours. Some would call it lack of 
influence. Rather let us say it was influence 
of a positive kind, having just as much to do 
in making life and feelings as the other. They 
only moved in opposite directions. 

In the matter of receiving impressions we 
note two dangers that lie before us. They are 
both extremes. Pne is that we are apt to 
steel ourselves against impressions, and the 
other is that we are apt to be too easily moved. 
Prejudice often leads us to overlook men's 
merits and powers. We can see nothing 
worthy in them, because we look through dark 
glasses. We refuse truth often because it is 
mixed with error. We do not appreciate 



206 LAWS OF SOUL GROWTH. 

strength because of known weakness. But 
this is not fair, either to our neighbor or our- 
selves. Gold found in the mountains is mixed 
with stone and foreign ore; and they pulverize 
the quartz, and sink the precious metal with 
mercur}^, and so find the grains the eye could 
not perceive. Yellow gold sprinkles every life, 
but we refuse it because of the dross. Don't 
think that the weakling has no word for you, 
because you are his superior in most things. 
The pauper and the criminal might open to 
you and me a revelation if we would receive 
it. In the new dispensation a little child shall 
lead them. We ought to learn to take off our 
hats before Truth, even when we meet her in a 
hovel. Too often we refuse obeisance to No- 
bility, because, forsooth, we find it dressed in 
common garb. In the silent tomb lies many a 
promise of better things— dead because the 
world refused to recognize its humble parent- 
age. I do not care where truth comes from if 
it is pure. I do not care where the lily grows 
if it lifts its white petals towards me. But 
mental aristocracy is a thing of its own kind, 



LAWS OF INFLUENCE. 20/ 

and haughtily ignores what is not of high in- 
tellectual origin. It is only fair to ourselves to 
throw ourselves open to conviction, no matter 
whence the prompting may come. 

The other danger to be avoided is too great 
aptness to impression. The one who wins our 
respect is too apt to win our reverence. We 
find ourselves saying, It must be true if he says 
so. Very willingly we submit to a dicta- 
torial rule and obey orders. The tendency 
has always been toward hero worship, and 
probably always will be in some form or other. 
I am not justified in adopting every dogma of 
a political idol. But almost unbounded confi- 
dence in a worthy citizen or friend, often leads 
us to overstep the line of propriety unwittingly. 
He has been found right a hundred times, we 
argue, therefore it is safe to follow him wherev- 
er he goes. But ' ' we are not bound to be 
good men's apes." 

Considering these two dangers, what we 
need is to soften our impressionable natures 
on the one hand, and to guard them on the 
other. We must not steel ourselves to the 



208 LAWS OF SOUL GROWTH. 

touch of the lowly and uneducated, nor re- 
ceive implicitly every word of the great. God 
gave the impressionable nature, and he also 
gave the judgment to stand sentinel over it. 
We are responsible not only for our influence 
upon others, but also for the influence they 
have upon us. 

Amidst so many shadows the Christian may 
feel timorous sometimes. Around are shadows 
falling thick and fast, evil casting greater 
length than good. But he believes in the 
power of his God, and that is enough. 

" Right forever on the scaffold. 
Wrong forever on the throne; 

But that scaffold sways the future. 
And behind the dim unknown 

Standeth God amid the shadows. 
Keeping watch above his own." 

Peter's shadow heals no more; but to-day as 
of old Jesus of Nazareth passeth by. Bring 
your couch where the shadow of his influence 
falls, and receive the benediction of his pres- 
ence. 



